Install an IDE hard drive | Follow the detailed guide in the section.

How do I install and troubleshoot an IDE hard drive?

This guide will teach you how to install an IDE hard drive. Be aware that opening up an OEM computer may void your warranty, so check before you begin.

If you try to install a large drive in many older systems, you'll find that the BIOS can address only 137 GB. On even older motherboards, the limit is 32 GB. To fix this, you can use a utility disk that comes with the drive, or, if you're a relatively experienced user, update the BIOS. The utility disk is a floppy, so if you don't have a floppy drive, you'll have to update the BIOS.

Skip ahead to the step that interests you most: preparing to install an IDE hard drive.

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1. Before You Begin

Handle the drive carefully and do not drop or bump it. Before installing, store the drive in an antistatic protective bag. Protect the drive from ESD by wearing an earthed wrist strap. Attach the wrist strap to the metal chassis of the computer. Handle the drive by its edges only. Do not apply pressure to the circuit board or attach labels to the drive cover. Shut down the host system before installing.

II. What Do You Need?

• A Phillips screwdriver and four 6-32 UNC socket screws. • A standard 40-pin IDE cable, or an 80-conductor cable if you're using UATA/66 or UATA/100 (maximum length: 18 inches). • An unused power cable for the new drive. • Needle-nose pliers for removing or setting jumpers.

Do not put your CD drive on the same cable as your hard drive! Most modern CD drives are ATA-33, while hard drives are ATA-133. All devices on a cable transfer data at the speed of the slowest device.

Let's get started.

Everything is unpacked. The drive is set by default to be ready for installation in a drive bay.

Firstly, what are master and slave? What do these mean? They need to be addressed specifically. A master can also be referred to as a "primary drive," while a slave is a "secondary drive." Many people prefer to use what's called "cable select." If you want to do this, just make sure it's connected to the correct part of the cable.

Want to know which part of the cable connects to where?

Prepare the Cables

If you want to set it as a master or slave, look for the jumper settings on the hard drive. You should see a diagram that looks like this:

None are set, but you can tell from the chart what needs to be set. Here's an example of a Seagate hard drive jumper settings chart.

#4. Set up the jumpers

• Master or single drive - Use this setting if the drive is the only one on the ATA interface cable.
• Slave - Use this setting if the drive is an additional drive on the cable, and the original drive is set to Master.
• Master with non-ATA compatible drive - Use this setting if the drive is the master for a CD-ROM, tape drive, or other non-ATA drive. Note that it's best to put CD-ROMs and other non-hard disk products on the secondary ATA channel.
• Cable Select (default) - Use with Ultra ATA cables. This allows the cable to determine whether the drive is a master or slave based on its position on the cable. The master drive connects to the black connector at the end of the cable; the slave connects to the gray connector in the middle; the host adapter connects to the blue connector at the other end of the cable.
• Limited Capacity option - You might need this option if the system you're installing the drive in doesn't support the full capacity of the drive. If you've installed a limited capacity jumper, you'll need a driver overlay program like the one installed by the Disc Wizard Starter Edition.

The table below shows the jumper settings for the U-Series and Barracuda ATA drive families (most Seagate ATA drives 20GB and larger). If you have an older drive, visit our Technical Library to find your model for detailed jumper information.

#5 Install the hard drive

Before you install your new drive, make sure that you unplug the computer from the wall. It's always a good idea to unplug anything you're going to mess around inside of. Before you stick your hands in there, it's also a good idea to touch the power supply! A static discharge could jump out and cause some damage. Just to be safe, give the power supply a tap, would you?

Open up your computer case.

You should now find an open 3.5-inch bay.

Slide the drive into an available bay, and locate two or four case screws. If you're lazy, use two to secure it from the side. If you never open up your system, use four. For this, you'll need to remove the two side panels of the case. Case screws are larger than the ones that secure a CD drive.

With the drive secure, continue by connecting the power and IDE cable. Look to one edge of the cable, and you will see a stripe. On a gray cable, it will usually be red; on a black cable, white; but there will be some color that indicates pin 1. This pin is always on the same side as the power connector.

To connect an IDE cable to the motherboard, you're looking for something like this:

Figure 7: Locate the IDE cable

Each connector represents an IDE channel. Most motherboards have two channels, and four-channel boards are becoming more common, especially at the high end.

Each channel can have two devices.

When you first boot up the machine, enter the BIOS and make sure the drive is recognized. Typically, you can access the BIOS by pressing [Delete], but it could be [F1] or [F2] instead. Look for a message on-screen when the computer first starts up, which should tell you which key to press.

Once inside the BIOS, you'll need to navigate to Standard CMOS, where you should see something like this:

Run the system setup program.
(If applicable) Enable LBA mode and UDMA mode.
Choose the Auto Detect option.
Save the settings and exit the system setup program.

If your drives are showing up properly, you're good to go. If not, you'll need to do some troubleshooting. First, from the main BIOS screen, select Integrated Peripherals. Make sure both IDE channels are enabled. It's most likely that your jumpers are set incorrectly.

Step 6: Partition the hard drive in Windows

If you have just installed a new hard drive and want to use it in Windows, you must first partition the hard drive! Note: If you want to recover data from an "old" hard drive, do not do this! Actually, there are several ways to partition a hard drive, for example, by partitioning the hard drive under Disk Management, or directly managing the hard drive with third-party partition management tools like AOMEI Partition Assistant, etc.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is an all-in-one hard disk partition tool and system optimization software that allows you to easily partition your hard drive or resize/extend partitions without data loss under the Windows environment. It also offers basic and advanced features such as creating, deleting, resizing/moving, formatting, and copying partitions for better Windows hard disk management.

Of course, if you bought the drive retail, it will come with an installation disc that you can use to partition the drive as well. If this is going to be your primary drive, you can use the partitioning application built into Windows. If you're using Windows 9x (why?), you may need to visit bootdisk.com for a solution that works for you. You'll be using fdisk to partition the drive. Since most people are using Windows 2000 or XP, you can skip the fdisk steps. The basics are:

1. Boot into the Windows system.
2. Open Computer Management and select Disk Management.
3. Initialize the disk.
4. Create partitions on the disk.
5. Format the disk.
6. Assign a drive letter to the disk.
7. Confirm and execute the changes.

If it is installed as a secondary drive on a Windows computer, you can access it through the built-in "Disk Management" tool. Go to Control Panel -> Go to Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management.

Look in the bottom right, you should see something like this. The disk with all the unallocated space is the one you want. Right-click on it, and choose “New Simple Volume”.

Create a new partition

A wizard will guide you through the process. Choose a partition size; if this is a secondary hard drive, obviously it's for storage, so just make it a primary partition and allocate 100% of the space to it.

Set the size of the new partition:

The next screens will look like this; just keep clicking “Next” until you get here.

Set the file system for the new partition

If you only use Windows, we recommend using NTFS. If you dual-boot with another operating system that cannot read NTFS, it may be a good idea to use Fat32 instead.

For NTFS, the default cluster size is 4KB, which is a good compromise between speed and storage space.

The label is just whatever you want to call it.

Make sure to choose Quick Format, otherwise you will have to wait a long time for the disk to be usable.

Click Next, and this is just a summary of what you've told it to do.

Click “Next,” and the new drive will soon be ready to use.

# 7. Troubleshooting

No Hard Disks Found:
Are two hard disks connected via the data cable? Make sure they are set to different settings (Master or Slave).
Check that power is connected and all connections are secure.
Ensure the hard disk is enabled in your system BIOS. If not, select the Auto Detect option.

The hard drive won't even power up:

Make sure your IDE cable is seated correctly. You'll see a stripe on one side of the cable, which indicates pin 1. Pin 1 is almost always the one closest to the power connector. If it's flipped over, your hard drive will usually be silent or unbootable.

Is the full capacity of the hard drive recognized?
Verify that the BIOS detects the hard drive automatically and that LBA mode is enabled.

My hard drive is slow:
Make sure your CD/DVD drive is on a separate cable or channel. Most modern CD drives are ATA/33, while newer hard drives are ATA/133. The transfer speed of any device on the channel is limited to that of the slowest device on the channel.

My hard drive has no jumper settings on the label:
Find the model number of your hard drive, then visit the manufacturer's website. They should have some instructions available. If not, email their tech support for assistance.

My 40 GB hard drive only shows as 38.2 GB:
This is normal and nothing to worry about. The formatted capacity of any drive will always be slightly less than the advertised size. This is due to differences in how manufacturers measure the size of a hard drive and how operating systems display it. Manufacturers use approximations (1000 MB = 1 GB instead of 2^30 bytes = 1 GB) in their calculations, while the OS shows the exact value.

Lost Hard Drive Data:

When you lose files from your hard drive, don't panic. A reliable Data Recovery Wizard tool can help. With just a few clicks, it thoroughly scans and recovers your disk data.