Jonnyboy295 Posted May 17, 2008 Report Posted May 17, 2008 Hi Guys, Wondered if any of the more technically minded of you might be able to offer some advice. I was recently given an e-machines tower unit that the motherboard had crapped out in. Being as it is a nicer case and had some better stuff on it I decided to rebuild my mobo etc into it (quite a challange to a technophobe like me when it comes to pc's ) and all went well (apart from one glitch but I will come to that later!) however....... The donor unit had a 120gb hard drive in it that there is nothing wrong with. I was wondering how difficult it would be to format it and install as a storage volume to keep pictures and skins etc in to free up the main HD. I am aware that I will need to plug in the flat lead thing (dont know proper name lol) using the slave plug, however I also think there is something next to it (i think it is called a jumper?!?) that needs to be put in the right place, I have attached a pic of the label of the HD along with the sockets as they are now. I think you have to set one to master and one to slave (?) but then someone said to me you can just leave both in cable select and will work the same? no idea hence why I am asking! Also how do i format the HD (currently has the old pc's OS on it) and do i need to install windows or can I just use it like a flash drive and drop stuff into and out of it? on to the other little problem, I used the floppy drive out of the donor unit as it matches the rest of the case, it has a usb and multi memory card reader in it that my old case didnt have, I located the same socket as was in the other Mobo and plugged it and all works fine. The problem is that when the PC boots up it comes up in the icon area as a remove stoage device and they show in the my computer drive list unless i use the 'safely remove hardware' wizard and turn them off, there was no name on the drive so i could look for drivers, could it be that i need to find them? or is there nothing I can do but put up with it?! Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to offer!
G-man Posted May 17, 2008 Report Posted May 17, 2008 Hi Guys, Wondered if any of the more technically minded of you might be able to offer some advice. I was recently given an e-machines tower unit that the motherboard had crapped out in. Being as it is a nicer case and had some better stuff on it I decided to rebuild my mobo etc into it (quite a challange to a technophobe like me when it comes to pc's ) and all went well (apart from one glitch but I will come to that later!) however....... The donor unit had a 120gb hard drive in it that there is nothing wrong with. I was wondering how difficult it would be to format it and install as a storage volume to keep pictures and skins etc in to free up the main HD. I am aware that I will need to plug in the flat lead thing (dont know proper name lol) using the slave plug, however I also think there is something next to it (i think it is called a jumper?!?) that needs to be put in the right place, I have attached a pic of the label of the HD along with the sockets as they are now. I think you have to set one to master and one to slave (?) but then someone said to me you can just leave both in cable select and will work the same? no idea hence why I am asking! Also how do i format the HD (currently has the old pc's OS on it) and do i need to install windows or can I just use it like a flash drive and drop stuff into and out of it? on to the other little problem, I used the floppy drive out of the donor unit as it matches the rest of the case, it has a usb and multi memory card reader in it that my old case didnt have, I located the same socket as was in the other Mobo and plugged it and all works fine. The problem is that when the PC boots up it comes up in the icon area as a remove stoage device and they show in the my computer drive list unless i use the 'safely remove hardware' wizard and turn them off, there was no name on the drive so i could look for drivers, could it be that i need to find them? or is there nothing I can do but put up with it?! Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to offer! on the picture on the drive it shows the slave jumper setting as the darkest area covering two pins from left to right. Move it so it covers the 2nd and 3rd pins from the left on the top row as your picture shows it m8. thats slave setting. You will have to check that bios is switched on for another drive. (done during start up) should auto detect mine says press f2 for bios. They are all different. Once it is recognised it should be just as easy as formatting a floppy through windows, ie right click on the drive letter in my computer and the option to format should be there on the menu that comes up. (xp it is). Hope this helps
Jonnyboy295 Posted May 18, 2008 Author Report Posted May 18, 2008 cheers g-man, will have a go tomorrow, just on thing, the drive in use now (C:) jumper setting is cs enabled, do i need to change this?
Nick M48 Posted May 18, 2008 Report Posted May 18, 2008 CS stands for cable select, when enabled the drive is supposed to detect where it is on the cable and set itself to either Master or slave, from experience it doesn't always seem to work properly, so I'd set your existing drive as master rather than cs enabled.
G-man Posted May 18, 2008 Report Posted May 18, 2008 Nick m is right. there should be a diagram on your other drive like the one in you picture. If your unsure post a picture of it and i will tell you. It will only need changing if your gonna put it on the same IDE cable as your master drive though.
Jonnyboy295 Posted May 18, 2008 Author Report Posted May 18, 2008 Hi guys thanks for the additional info, I ended up putting the second drive in at 1.30 this morning, the 1st HD (C:) is set to CS, although everything seems to work fine and the 2nd drive is in and formatted managed to free up quite a few gigs already!! Cheers for the help, couldnt have done it with out ya lol
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