2 Hard Disks in Dell - where to get cable?

[lyne]

I had my Dell Dimension 4700 and an ancient Compaq plugged into the
same Gold series Belkin surge protector. After a storm, the Compaq is
fine but the Dell rolled over. I could not even boot from the CD, but,
after installing the replacement hard drive, I was able to boot and
install WinXP.

I want to put my sick disk in as a second drive to see if I can get
anything off of it before shipping it off to a data rescue company but
Dell says that they don't support 2 hard drives. There is a second bay
and a spare jack on the power cable but the data cable (not sure the
official name for this) goes straight from the motherboard to the disk
with no additional plugs on it. Where can I get another one of these
cables that has 2 jacks? What is the cable called? Is this even the
kind of cable/interface that allows things to be daisy-chained?

Has anyone had much success with these rescue companies?

Thanks!

 

[HOJO]

It's called an ide ribbon cable and any computer store will have them.

I had my Dell Dimension 4700 and an ancient Compaq plugged into the
same Gold series Belkin surge protector. After a storm, the Compaq is
fine but the Dell rolled over. I could not even boot from the CD, but,
after installing the replacement hard drive, I was able to boot and
install WinXP.

I want to put my sick disk in as a second drive to see if I can get
anything off of it before shipping it off to a data rescue company but
Dell says that they don't support 2 hard drives. There is a second bay
and a spare jack on the power cable but the data cable (not sure the
official name for this) goes straight from the motherboard to the disk
with no additional plugs on it. Where can I get another one of these
cables that has 2 jacks? What is the cable called? Is this even the
kind of cable/interface that allows things to be daisy-chained?

Has anyone had much success with these rescue companies?

Thanks!

 

[Charlie]

I had my Dell Dimension 4700 and an ancient Compaq plugged into the
same Gold series Belkin surge protector. After a storm, the Compaq is
fine but the Dell rolled over. I could not even boot from the CD,
but, after installing the replacement hard drive, I was able to boot
and install WinXP.

I want to put my sick disk in as a second drive to see if I can get
anything off of it before shipping it off to a data rescue company but
Dell says that they don't support 2 hard drives. There is a second
bay and a spare jack on the power cable but the data cable (not sure
the official name for this) goes straight from the motherboard to the
disk with no additional plugs on it. Where can I get another one of
these cables that has 2 jacks? What is the cable called? Is this
even the kind of cable/interface that allows things to be
daisy-chained?

Has anyone had much success with these rescue companies?

Thanks!

Just go to your closest computer store and tell them what you want to do.
What you need is a IDE cable that supports a master and slave drive. When
you install the second drive remember to change the pin on the back of the
hard drive from master to slave or cs depending on what you current drive is
set to.

 

[Bob Knowlden]

"...Dell says that they don't support 2 hard drives..."

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4700/sm/parts.htm#wp1053797

Scroll down to "adding a second hard drive".

Standard IDE ribbon cables support two drives. I'm a little surprised that
Dell gave you a single-drive cable, although they certainly exist. I believe
that the master drive usually goes on the end. Make sure that you get an 80
conductor cable that supports Ultra DMA drives. (These are also known as ATA
100 and ATA 133.) On other Dell systems, they have recommended that the
drives be jumpered for Cable Select, but they don't supply that detail in
the link above.

I've never used a data recovery company. The word on them is that they are
much too expensive for personal data, but I have never gotten a quotation.

Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.

 

[D.Currie]

I had my Dell Dimension 4700 and an ancient Compaq plugged into the
same Gold series Belkin surge protector. After a storm, the Compaq is
fine but the Dell rolled over. I could not even boot from the CD, but,
after installing the replacement hard drive, I was able to boot and
install WinXP.

I want to put my sick disk in as a second drive to see if I can get
anything off of it before shipping it off to a data rescue company but
Dell says that they don't support 2 hard drives. There is a second bay
and a spare jack on the power cable but the data cable (not sure the
official name for this) goes straight from the motherboard to the disk
with no additional plugs on it. Where can I get another one of these
cables that has 2 jacks? What is the cable called? Is this even the
kind of cable/interface that allows things to be daisy-chained?

Has anyone had much success with these rescue companies?

Thanks!

If this is just a temporary setup, unplug your CD drive and plug the hard
drive in using those connections.

As for data recovery companies, plan on spending $200 to $2000, average. The
lower end of that will get you a diagnostic and probably not much more.

 

[MAP]

My Dell (8300)doesn't use the standard 80 pin ribbon cable,it looks more
like a round fiber optic cable.

Mike Pawlak

 

[MAP]

Try installing the old HD on another computer and network the two.
If you do this you might need this link.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

 

[Guest]

It would appear that the dell 4700 system uses serial ATA and will require a
serial ATA cable. SATA cables only support one drive
Using the IDE cable from the CD will not work as it has a differant
connection.

Chances are the compaq pc uses IDE not SATA. If this is the case, you wont
be able to put the drive into the old compaq pc, unless of cource you can
source some sort of convertor, which to my knowledge is not available.

 

[Anna]

It would appear that the dell 4700 system uses serial ATA and will require
a serial ATA cable. SATA cables only support one drive
Using the IDE cable from the CD will not work as it has a differant
connection.

Chances are the compaq pc uses IDE not SATA. If this is the case, you wont
be able to put the drive into the old compaq pc, unless of cource you can
source some sort of convertor, which to my knowledge is not available.

lyne:
To simplify matters, might you consider purchasing a USB external hard drive
enclosure (assuming you don't already have one) and mount the Dell drive in
that enclosure? The installation process is quite simple - just two plug-in
connections to your drive. The cost of the enclosure will be about $30 or so
from any of the common online vendors and you can make good use of that
device for routine backup operations in the future. So even if what I'm
about to describe (re using the USB enclosure) doesn't work out because your
drive is "kaput", the USB enclosure is a worthwhile investment that you can
later put to good use.

After installing the drive in the enclosure, you simply plug in the included
USB cable to one of the USB ports on your Dell computer. Assuming the drive
is not mechanically/electronically defective, you should be able to at least
access data on that drive and backup same.

Another option... As Lewi has pointed out, your Dell computer uses the
new-type of hard drives, i.e. Serial ATA (SATA) drives. It's a
near-certainty (although I haven't worked with that particular machine so
I'm not positive about this) that there's another available SATA connector
on the motherboard that could be used to connect a second SATA drive. Since
you already have replaced the drive, I take it you have gained some
familiarity with the "inner guts" of your machine. And hopefully you have a
manual or diagram provided by Dell identifying this SATA connector. If so,
you would not even have to affix the drive to the case; since it would just
be a temporary connection while you access its data. All you would need to
do is make the connection and prop up the drive just outside the case so
that it doesn't dangle too precariously from its connections! And, of
course, you will need another SATA cable if your replacement drive did not
come with a cable for that drive.

As to your question re commercial data recovery organizations. Yes, they can
be quite effective in recovering data, but they're very expensive to engage.
We're talking here of costs involving hundreds of dollars and not
infrequently going into the four figure range. I'm loathe to recommend any
particular one - what little experience I've had with them has been rather
mixed. There are also data recovery software programs available. A Google
search will point you to many of these programs. They're something of a
"crapshoot", so again, I'm loathe to recommend any particular one.
Anna

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Oops.

My apologies. As another poster pointed out, the 4700 probably uses a SATA
(Serial ATA) hard drive. I assumed that, since you weren't familiar with
cables, that the replacement drive was the more common ATA sort.

SATA controllers support a single drive per cable. There are two SATA
sockets on the mainboard, right next to each other.

You'll need a second SATA cable. They are becoming commonly available,
although they may be overpriced at the office supply stores or Circuit City.

Bob Kn.

 

[Lyne]

I'm the original poster....

Thank you all so much for your responses. I looked online and can get
the SATA cable for under $10 so I think that will be my best option.
There is aanother connector on the motherboard.

I talked to Belkin about the data recovery warranty and they said they
are not too concerned about getting the original receipt for the surge
protector. You have to mail them the surge protector so they can
decide if there was a failure, then ship the disk off to the data
recovery firm That sounds like it could take a long time so I'll try
it myself first.

The one positive in all of this is that I finally was able to create my
partition for Linux before reinstalling stuff on the replacement disk.
I miss Linux!!! I was a nut for commands like "find", "grep", "sed",
and "strings".

Thanks again!

Lyne