Godzilla-Size Hard Drives

Jumping Through Jumpers

The first step in any hard drive upgrade is to physically remove the old drive and put in the new one (in the same drive bay if possible). Most PCs made since 1995 have two EIDE connectors on the motherboard, called the primary and secondary channels. They may each have a cable with two connectors. Your old drive is most likely attached to the first connector on the primary channel's cable, with its jumpers set to master--the only configuration that allows that hard drive to start your PC. Your goal: Use the same settings for your new drive.

Eventually, after you've formatted and partitioned the new drive, you'll add the old one back to the same ribbon, with its jumpers set to slave. But that comes later. For now, just remember that if any of the connectors or jumper settings for either drive is wrong, your PC may not start.

Fortunately, most drive manufacturers make jumpers easy to figure out. The settings for most of the models we tested are printed right on the drive as well as in the manual (Quantum's settings are only in the manual). The Seagate and Western Digital drives are the most clearly marked; IBM's and Maxtor's take a bit of study. Nearly all the drives came set as masters.

The only drives we installed that deviated from the new-drive­master, old-drive­slave configuration were Seagate's Medalist Pro 6451 and 8641. Because Seagate's easy-to-use DiscWizard software formats and partitions the drives in Windows 95, it needs to run off your old hard drive. This process adds a step to the installation. To set up a Seagate drive, you must temporarily jumper it as a slave, hook it up to the other connector on the same cable as the old hard drive, and change it later to be the master. Fortunately, the procedure is explained thoroughly in Seagate's manual.