Adding second hard disk

[news.ntlworld.com]

Hi,

I know this stuff is basic, but please appreciate I'm a novice (as well as a
perfectionist *g*).

I'm planning to add a second hard disk as slave on the same IDE channel my
current HDD is attached to. Now I've heard stories about compatibility
issues when mixing manufacturers - so my question would be are such stories
exaggerated?

FYI, I have a Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80Gb) hooked up as master, and am planning to
add a Seagate ST3200822A (200Gb) as a slave on the same channel.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Ta,
Jen

 

[old jon]

And your operating system is..?. And your Computer is..?. More info will
help people give you good, and quick information. best wishes..J

 

[news.ntlworld.com]

Sorry, OS is Windows XP Professional SP2. Computer (unfortunately) is a
Compaq Presario S3160UK.

 

[old jon]

Shouldn`t be a great problem then. First thing to do is take the cover off
the computer and have a look inside. Find the existing hard drive and see
that it has a `spare` plug on the ribbon cable, and a place to fit the new
drive either below or above the existing drive. The ribbon cable should
consist of 80 wires
side by side. Are you with me so far ?. come back..J

 

[Wheat Muncher]

Sorry, OS is Windows XP Professional SP2. Computer (unfortunately) is a
Compaq Presario S3160UK.

No Prob. Ensure that the jumper settings are correct of course. Maxtor
should be set to Master or Single, and the Seagate should be set to
Slave. It is quite straight forward from there.
The only issue you may have is the partitioning. If it is a brand new
drive, it will not have a partition on it. In the Control Panel under
administrative tools, select Computer Management, the Disk Manager. You
will see the volume labeled as Disk 1 (not 0- that is your Master Drive)
as a blank partition. Using the tools, most of which can be accessed by
right-clicking the drive label, create a new NTFS partition and format
it. You're done.

Wheats

 

[kony]

Hi,

I know this stuff is basic, but please appreciate I'm a novice (as well as a
perfectionist *g*).

I'm planning to add a second hard disk as slave on the same IDE channel my
current HDD is attached to. Now I've heard stories about compatibility
issues when mixing manufacturers - so my question would be are such stories
exaggerated?

Yes, the're exaggerated. It never happened often but less
so today. That's no consolation for anyone it did happen
to, but odds are very high you will not face this situation
today.

FYI, I have a Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80Gb) hooked up as master, and am planning to
add a Seagate ST3200822A (200Gb) as a slave on the same channel.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Sounds fine, just jumper them as described (master & slave),
with the master on the end of the cable. Ensure sufficient
airflow- modern drives should not be stacked one atop the
other with no space or airflow flowing around them,
something many cases weren't designed to accomodate (which
seems ridiculous given almost all PCs have hard drives, but
sadly is too often true).

 

[Bob]

jumper them as described (master & slave),
with the master on the end of the cable.

Although that is how I do it, mostly out of habit, is there any reason
why a pair of disks that is correctly jumpered must occupy specific
positions on the IDE cable? I am not talking about so-called "cable
select", which I have never gotten to work properly. I am talking
about jumpering one disk for master and the other for slave.

So what if the master is in the middle?

--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you are reading it in English, thank an American soldier.

 

[kony]

Although that is how I do it, mostly out of habit, is there any reason
why a pair of disks that is correctly jumpered must occupy specific
positions on the IDE cable? I am not talking about so-called "cable
select", which I have never gotten to work properly. I am talking
about jumpering one disk for master and the other for slave.

So what if the master is in the middle?

So then you deviate from the standard method of doing it-
and it usually works fine. Manufacturers try to make things
as foolproof as reasonably possible.

Even so, many (perhaps most) drives shipped today come
jumpered to cable select, because for the most part it works
fine given a cable that has a pin isolated from the middle
connector, as those shipping with the retail drives do, and
perhaps now has completely dominated cable designs and could
be considered standard.

 

[Pelysma]

Hi,

I know this stuff is basic, but please appreciate I'm a novice (as well as a
perfectionist *g*).

I'm planning to add a second hard disk as slave on the same IDE channel my
current HDD is attached to. Now I've heard stories about compatibility
issues when mixing manufacturers - so my question would be are such stories
exaggerated?

FYI, I have a Maxtor 6Y080L0 (80Gb) hooked up as master, and am planning to
add a Seagate ST3200822A (200Gb) as a slave on the same channel.

I see only one possible problem:

If your computer is over two years old it _may not_ support hard disk
drives over 128 GB (or ~131,000 MB or ~137,000,000 KB). If it was
manufactured before 2001, it definitely will not. You may want to ask
Compaq about this if you can't find it in your computer's documentation.

What you want to know is whether your motherboard supports "48-bit LBA" mode
(ATA Specification 6). If it does, you're good to go.

If not, it may not be possible to use more than 128 GB of your new drive
without replacing the motherboard. Contact Compaq about this, also, if it
arises; they may have a workaround. I'm not aware of a software or
firmware solution, but stranger things have happened.

As I understand it, in order to safely use a larger drive on a computer that
does not support it, you need to temporarily install the drive on a machine
that can work with the entire drive, and use that machine to create a 128GB
partition. When it is installed on the older machine, the computer will
see only the partition and will be able to address it, but the rest of the
disk will not be usable for the time being.

Don't shoot the messenger, I'm only just learning about this issue myself.

Otherwise what you are doing is very easy and should go in smoothly. As
another poster has mentioned, you will either have to place a partition on
the disk or use your Control Panel computer management console to set up the
drive as a "dynamic volume", which essentially does the same thing by a
different technical method.

 

[Pelysma]

Although that is how I do it, mostly out of habit, is there any reason
why a pair of disks that is correctly jumpered must occupy specific
positions on the IDE cable? I am not talking about so-called "cable
select", which I have never gotten to work properly. I am talking
about jumpering one disk for master and the other for slave.

So what if the master is in the middle?

Master/slave jumper settings override the default cable selection, almost
always. I do have one computer here -- the one I'm sitting at right now --
that does not accept drives in any setting except CS, but I don't know
whether that's a malfunction, a Compaq trait, or some oddity in the cable.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I see only one possible problem:

If your computer is over two years old it _may not_ support hard disk
drives over 128 GB (or ~131,000 MB or ~137,000,000 KB). If it was
manufactured before 2001, it definitely will not. You may want to ask
Compaq about this if you can't find it in your computer's documentation.

What you want to know is whether your motherboard supports
"48-bit LBA" mode (ATA Specification 6). If it does, you're good to go.

Another solution costing much less is to get a PCI expansion card
that contains an IDE controller. Most have two IDE channels, accomodating
up to 4 hard drives (or other ATA/ATAPI devices). Popular brands are
Promise, SIIG, Highpoint, and there are many more. Prices hover at
$30 +- $15. Here is an SIIG controller card on sale at Dell.com for $39:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...sku=A0004774&category_id=5369&c=us&l=en&cs=19

There are also cards available for SATA drives.

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

Another solution costing much less is to get a PCI expansion card
that contains an IDE controller. Most have two IDE channels, accomodating
up to 4 hard drives (or other ATA/ATAPI devices). Popular brands are
Promise, SIIG, Highpoint, and there are many more. Prices hover at
$30 +- $15. Here is an SIIG controller card on sale at Dell.com for $39:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...sku=A0004774&category_id=5369&c=us&l=en&cs=19

There are also cards available for SATA drives.

*TimDaniels*

Don't know if I'd call that Dell part a true "sale" since
pricewatch typically has similar if not same siig cards for
about $16-20 delivered.

 

[DaveW]

First, though, you had better find out if the BIOS of your motherboard is
recent enough to handle a harddrive that is larger than the 137 GB limit of
older BIOS's.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

:




Don't know if I'd call that Dell part a true "sale" since
pricewatch typically has similar if not same siig cards for
about $16-20 delivered.

Maybe. But right now the lowest price Pricewatch lists is
$48 plus $3-$7 shipping for this SIIG controller card:
http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=103&pid=437

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

Maybe. But right now the lowest price Pricewatch lists is
$48 plus $3-$7 shipping for this SIIG controller card:
http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=103&pid=437

*TimDaniels*

Why would it need be that specific cosmetically identical
card rather than one of several using same chipset and same
drivers?

Actually that one is a downgrade _unless_ it also supports
RAID... can't tell and I'm too lazy to look it up.

The chipset can toggle between RAID and ATAPI support via
jumper, as the same bios supports both... unless the
physical card doesn't have the jumper... can't tell on that
one, some have a jumper wire you can leave (or cut with
snips, or desolder, or put a pin-header in it's place,
etc)... though IMO, one is better off leaving their ATAPI
stuff on the motherboard channels, particularly when the
whole point was more support for faster ATA and size
capability for the HDDs.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Why would it need be that specific cosmetically identical
card rather than one of several using same chipset and same
drivers?

Actually that one is a downgrade _unless_ it also supports
RAID... can't tell and I'm too lazy to look it up.

The chipset can toggle between RAID and ATAPI support via
jumper, as the same bios supports both... unless the
physical card doesn't have the jumper... can't tell on that
one, some have a jumper wire you can leave (or cut with
snips, or desolder, or put a pin-header in it's place,
etc)... though IMO, one is better off leaving their ATAPI
stuff on the motherboard channels, particularly when the
whole point was more support for faster ATA and size
capability for the HDDs.

Read the thread above. It says PCI IDE controller cards
are available for $30 +- $15. I give as an example the SIIG
card which Dell is currently selling for about $39, right in that
range. I did NOT say that it was the best deal or the lowest
priced controller card on the market. For example, you can
find IDE controller cards for ATA/133MB/s by SYBA for $15.
That also is in the range. What's your gripe?

But for the record, I've been using the SIIG ATA/133 IDE
controller card for 1 1/2 years with no problems, and I also
bought it through Dell which has had the lowest online price
whenever I've rechecked prices over that period of time. And
I chose it because it was the only one that lists a 256-byte
FIFO buffer for each channel.

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

Read the thread above. It says PCI IDE controller cards
are available for $30 +- $15. I give as an example the SIIG
card which Dell is currently selling for about $39, right in that
range. I did NOT say that it was the best deal or the lowest
priced controller card on the market. For example, you can
find IDE controller cards for ATA/133MB/s by SYBA for $15.
That also is in the range. What's your gripe?

I'm not griping, just pointing out that (unlike some cards
with different chipsets) there isn't anything gained by the
card from Dell, it just costs more.

But for the record, I've been using the SIIG ATA/133 IDE
controller card for 1 1/2 years with no problems, and I also
bought it through Dell which has had the lowest online price
whenever I've rechecked prices over that period of time. And
I chose it because it was the only one that lists a 256-byte
FIFO buffer for each channel.

I have a couple of the SIIG based cards here that work ok
too.

On these software based controller cards, the buffer size is
always the same per any card with same chipset. They do not
have separate, discrete memory on them, rather it is simply
a feature of the controller itself. Same goes for the
Promise or other soft-IDE cards.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You're arguing about extrania. You can go off and investigate
the chipsets and the BIOSes all you want since your time is
worth nothing. The bottom line is that the Original Poster can
do without a new motherboard. All he needs is a PCI IDE
controller card costing between $15 and $45. They have
become commodities, especially for Parallel ATA, and they
are available all over the net. The big names are as I posted:
Promise, Highpoint, SIIG. The low end for cost is populated
by companies such as SYBA.

Here is a link for Promise's PATA/133 card:
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=Non-RAID HBAs&product_id=87

Here is a link for Highpoint's PATA/133 card:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/
Click on their latest RocketRAID product, then select ATA non-RAID
on the Products list on the left. Then click on their Rocket133 or
Rocket133SB.

Here is SYBA's PATA/133 offering:
http://www.syba.com/product/43/02/01/1/index.html

*TimDaniels*

 

[kony]

You're arguing about extrania.

LOL.

I"m simply pointing out that buying that card from Dell is
throwing away money relative to functionally identical cards
selling for 1/2 as much elsewher.

You can go off and investigate
the chipsets and the BIOSes all you want since your time is
worth nothing.

Well it's worth 1/2 the price of the Dell card I suppose,
but actually I already knew this, didn't have to investigate
it at this point and have saved others that time in
investigating by posting... kinda the whole point about
sharing information, so multiple people benefit from
something instead of each having to redundantly learn it.

The bottom line is that the Original Poster can
do without a new motherboard. All he needs is a PCI IDE
controller card costing between $15 and $45. They have
become commodities, especially for Parallel ATA, and they
are available all over the net. The big names are as I posted:
Promise, Highpoint, SIIG. The low end for cost is populated
by companies such as SYBA.

Here is a link for Promise's PATA/133 card:
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=Non-RAID HBAs&product_id=87

Here is a link for Highpoint's PATA/133 card:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/
Click on their latest RocketRAID product, then select ATA non-RAID
on the Products list on the left. Then click on their Rocket133 or
Rocket133SB.

Here is SYBA's PATA/133 offering:
http://www.syba.com/product/43/02/01/1/index.html

*TimDaniels*

I agree, add it was useful to point out these other
alternative chipsets the cards are based around. I suppose
my main point is that if you want (take your pick, a Promise
FastTrack X2 for example), there's no point to buy one at
double the cost unless you're getting something more for the
$$. It's quite quick and easy to find popular products more
competitively priced. That's not necessarily a knock
against Dell, some of their (other computing) products are
priced better, more competitively than that SIIG card.