please help me, keep me sane.

joe316

i bought myself a 2nd hard drive yesterday , a 160 Gb samsung one for my six month old dell 8300, 3.06ghz P4, 1024Mb, 120Mb seagate hard drive im running bios version A03.
i have done everything under the sun to try and get it to work and followed all directions by dell, but it still doesnt work, i go into setup and change the drive config so it tries to find the secondary device but when i finish out of that it says it cannot load/find the secondary device i skip this and continue loading to windows in a vain hope it ll be there but of coarse it aint. i ve gone into admin tools and looked at disk managementand there seems to be something there an unlabeled drive with a capacity of around 39Mb.
also does each of the harddrives have to have a seperate power as i cannot find an extra one in my dell, can anyone with a fairly new dell 8300 know if there is another power cable for a second harddrive somewhere hidden inside the computer.
thanks in advance for the advice

Mutant_Fruit

Right, firstly i presume you have connected the IDE cable. This is a long thin cable, with about 40 or 80 pins on each end. There is probably a spare port on the existing cable, which has your 120gb drive.

Next, you have to connect the power cable. There should be a spare connector somewhere. There has to be one. Just look for the power connector that connects to your existing drive, and then follow the wire around looking for an unused one.

Thirdly, make sure your new drive is set to SLAVE. You will have to change the jumpers on the drive to do this. Instructions should have come with the drive showing how to do this, but basically, somewhere on the same end as the IDE slot and power slot will be a little section, about 5 pins long, and 2 pins deep, and should have a little jumper on one of em. Move this jumper so that it puts the drive into Slave mode. (this depends onthe drive, so just check if theres a sticker on the drive showing master/slave etc, or read any manuals).

Dr Bolouswki

take it step by step

is it a sata drive or an IDE drive?

have you set the jumper on the back to slave?

your questions about power are confusing - without a power connector the drive will do nothing - if there is not a spare 4 pin molex connected get a splitter for an existing one - if its SATA you might need a convertor from molex

You have to get the drive detected in the BIOS first - once that is accomplished you have to partition the drive and format it - all this before entering windows

to partition the drive download a program called fdisk and run it off a bootdisk

good luck!

SantaHoe

also does each of the harddrives have to have a seperate power as i cannot find an extra one in my dell

I'm not sure exactly what you mean there.
Do you mean you have one cable with two molex connectors branched off it? or you can't find a free molex connector to power your new harddrive?
Using both molex connectors branched from the same cable should be fine, if you can't find a free molex, you could try a Y splitter on the one you have atm.
Sorry if that's a stupid question/suggestion and I've completely missed the point, I'm very tired

As mutant said, check your jumpers... and I wouldn't bother checking things out in windows until the BIOS has picked it up.
You could always plug the new harddrive in on its own, just to see if the BIOS can pick it up at all.... once you've got that much sorted - it's just a matter of re-reading the jumper labeling and finding a combination that allows the new drive to co-exist as a slave to your original drive.

joe316

thanks for all the help guys sorry if i was a bit confuing im a bit distressed here, i tried searching around the whole of the inside of the computer for another power cable(it never came with one) but all i can find is the original one going from the motherboard to my old harddrive so it looks like thats my major problem first of all, i tried switching over the power cables and bios saw that it was there (it showed the 160GB cap) but it didnt load into windows naturely, but it looks like ill have to get that power cabel first.

KdjaCL

If you have no power cable you need to get a new PSU (tricky with Dells and there 251.1254654457 watt PSUS) or you could sell me the drive

Heh you need another power outlet buying a new pSU would do it but Dells dont like new power supplies much.

kdjac

joe316

so it isnt just a matter of gettin another one of those little blue wires? ah feck

KdjaCL

Well in a nutshell Dell dont like you to upgrade , they prefer you to buy a new pc.

Find out the wattage and spec of your current PSU (will be written on the side of it)
If you have 2 CD/DVD drives you could dump one of them and use its power for the HD.

kdjac

michaelpwilson

Don't have a coronary joe316. Contrary to what KdjaC seems to be indicating (probably in jest!) it's very doubtful you need a new power supply.

You still haven't told us whether you bought a SATA or IDE hard disk. If it's an IDE disk (still the most popular - it takes a wide ribbon cable to connect it to the computer) and if you don't have a spare power connector (called a molex connector, it's got four wires per connector) then all you need to buy is this. I wouldn't pay €10 for delivery though, so you might want to go to the cowboys at Compustore or PC World to get it. This Y-cable will split one molex (power) connector into two for you, and you can then power both of your hard disks. Before you've connected the molex and ribbon cables, you should follow the advice above and set the jumper on the disk to Slave.

If you bought an SATA hard disk, I don't think you don't need to worry about jumpers, but you may need (1) a new SATA cable to hook up the data ports of the drive, like this one, and (2) if your drive doesn't take the standard molex power connector you may need this. Again, you might want to get these at a local store as the delivery costs from Komplett are too expensive for these types of items.

In either case you should get the drive recognised in your BIOS before you go anywhere near Windows. Once your BIOS has recognised it, if you're running Windows 2000 / XP I don't think you need to use fdisk. You can go straight to Disk Administrator and partition / format your disk there.

Relax joe316, once you've got this done you'll be building your own computer from scratch!

Regards

Michael

joe316

sorry its a sata drive i always seem to forget the important details

joe316

sorry its a sata drive i always seem to forget the important details, i got one of those wit the drive but i cant seem to figure out wot to do wit it, the original harddrive has a wire going into it wit two connectors on it ive plugged in the last connector into d old and nearer connector into the new one and wot seems like the power cable into the old one, but still cant get the bios to recognise it it i posted up links of pics of the inside of the computer would that help?

gamer

Try going to bios menu press del on bootup to get to it go to advanced options set drive 1 ,2,3,4 to auto or auto detect mode ,after making all connections power ,ide or sata cable while power is off MAIN power cable plugged out from pc, then put back power cable then reboot and pc should aut0detect scan for all new hardrives and autodetect new hd size partition layout etc,drive o is ur main hard drive,master boot drive with windows on it.SIMPLEST WAY NEW DRIVE set as slave on secondary unused connector of primary sata,ide cable ,ist connector goes into drive 0,master,,,,boot drive. bios should show in boot options boot from drive 0.,usually .watch bootup screen to see does it list ur second drive as primary or secondary,it,ll show whether its in primary or secondary mode ,if its brand new drive it needs to be fdisked, patitioned,reboot again then formatted from dos prompt if u have winxp or 2000 u have a choice to format it in fat32 or ntfs ,u shud format it in same format as drive c ur bootdrive ,the new drive is drive d ,if in doubt format in fat32 ,compatible with win 9.*,xp etc.when in dos prompt type d:\ use format command ,go to dosmode,.type d:\ ,then dir to make sure ur not working on ur bootdrive. otherwise u cud wipe out all ur files info and windows,,be careful,,newdrive shud be empty,no directorys whatsoever, take ur time.ide cable has 30 connectors i think.

RicardoSmith

KdjaC - Why post if you don't know what you are talking about? Thats not helping anyone. joe316 - ignore KdjaC listen to michaelpwilson.

A simple search on the Dell Talk forums here shows that the Dell 8300 has a SATA controller. The Dell talk forums are a great resources for all Dell upgrades. Jsut search on 8300 SATA and see what you get back. What we don't know is if the original drive is IDE or SATA. I suspect its a IDE as Dell had the SATA as option only. Some of the threads on Dell Talk would confirm that. Though joe316's PC could have been ordered with the SATA drive option. A couple of pics of the interior specially the drives and how they are wired would answer a lot of questions quickly.

gamer

when u go to bios ,and make changes you have to make changes ,then save new settings, then exit bios ,pc boots up , all drives shud be in auto or autodetect mode,if u put new drive on second ide or sata cable leave it as master on end connector primary, windows will still load cos new drive is empty ,there is no os or boot command on it, ide cable has 2 connectors end conn is primary ,middle connector is secondary ,drive on a secondary connector should be set in slave mode.i think sata cables are the same .