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Upgrade Guide

Installing internal IDE and SCSI removable-media drives, step by step.

  

IDE Drive

Find the Connectors

Turn off your PC, unplug it, and remove the cover. There are two IDE connectors (A), the primary and secondary, on your PC's motherboard. Normally, you'll find one with a cable attached to your IDE hard drive and another with a cable attached to your IDE CD-ROM drive. Both cables probably have free connectors. The preferred choice is to use the extra connector on the cable attached to the CD-ROM drive. If no extra connector is available on the cable, replace that cable with the one that came with your removable-media drive.

In some cases, both the hard drive and CD-ROM drive will be connected to one cable. If your computer is set up that way, use the cable supplied with your removable-media drive and attach it to the second IDE connector on your system's motherboard.

Set the Jumpers

If your removable-media drive is the second drive on a cable, use needle-nose pliers to set its jumpers (B) to "slave." (Most drives come set as slave by default.) If it's the only drive on a cable, set the jumpers to "master."

Note that if you install the removable-media drive on the same cable as your hard drive, you may have to change the jumper settings on your hard drive. Some removable-media drives allot a specific jumper position when they're the only drive with an IDE cable. In that case, you'll have to change the hard drive's jumpers to "master."

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