I have found a second hard drive I wish to install. Where can I get info on this process, and can I install it without losing the information stored on it?

Hi melvis: You should be able to install second drive as a slave drive, you need to make sure that it's dip pin is set for slave not master. Then connect it to the ribbon cable (the middle connector, & make sure you use a "straight" ribbon cable if you need to extend the connection, if you use a ribbon cable with the twisted master connection it won't work, also make sure pin #1 in right) & set hard drive info in BIOS. You should be able to leave data on drive, but you might not be able to run some of the programs installed on that drive (missing dll's & other installed info), you might need to do a clean install of those programs & link data files to those programs. Here's a web site that might help you with installing the slave drive. http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/install_2nd_ata.html Good luck. Z

The first thing to figure out is whether the connections on the hard drive is IDE or SCSI. The next is find out how many IDE controllers your commputer has. If the commputer has only one IDE slot and you have a cdrom, chances are your hard drive and cdrom are set as master and slave on the same ribbon cable. That is the limit for IDE connections and in that case you will have to install another IDE controller card. If you have two IDE controllers in your computer, your hard drive will probably be set as master on one and your cdrom will be set as master on the other. In that case, you will need a double ended IDE ribbon cable to connect your hard drives to the same IDE controller. On your hard drives you will have jumpers(plastic encased metal strips used to connect two pins) you will have to use to set the drive as either master or slave. These jumpers can be located either at the back next to the IDE socket or on the circuit board of the hard drive. There will be three sets(six pins) or four sets(eight pins) of pins,each set being a switch. Each switch will be marked as to their use being: master(M) slave(SL) cable select(CA) or single(S) or they may be listed as J1, J2, J3, J4, in which case you need the information as to their use. Setup the hard drive you want to boot from as master and the second hard drive as slave. Insert the end of the IDE cable into the master and the middle IDE connector into the slave drive. Plug a power connector into each drive. On startup, enter CMOS setup and set up your drive. If your BIOS has a hard drive auto detect, use that to determine the parameters of the drive. If your BIOS doesn't have this feature, you will have to know the settings of the drive and enter them manually from your standard CMOS setup. You will need to know the numbers for the heads, sectors, cylinders and landing zone. This will determine the size of your hard drive. In CMOS setup, select drive d: and use the user type(usually type 47) to enter these numbers. If you don't have the drive parameters, check the website of the drive manufacturer. Save your changes when exiting CMOS. If your two operating systems are compatable, you should be able to enter through your Windows or Dos by selecting the drive letter. If not, you may have to use a bootdisk to access. If you need more or better info, check out the how-to's to the left or go to PCGuide.com.

I have a PentiumPro (Windows 98) with 2 SCSI drives totalling just under 4 Gigs. I'd like to add an IDE drive to this mix, but can't figure out how to get the BIOS to see it. The "new" drive already has Windows on it. Is it possible to add an IDE to a SCSI setup? The install disk that came w/the drive found it OK, but the machine itself doesn't. Any suggestions anyone?

never mind. I went to the BIOS and set the drive up as USER defined. I didn't realize I needed to define teh number of cylinders etc. Thanks anyway.

I have two IDE hard disk same brand, one is 5GB the other one 10GB. Both hard disk has an existing windows 95 OS and both are configured master. And in my existing setup, im only using the 5GB set as the master with CD drive. I want to make my 10GB as my slave, so i followed the setting of the hard disc jumper , cable and bios for it to be a slave. I have set the 10GB as my secondary IDE slave. When I reset my system, the BIOS has auto detected both of my hard disc. The 5GB as the primary master and the 10GB as the secondary slave. Problem is under windows only my 5GB has a drive letter assignment (C:) my CD drive (D:). The 10GB is somewhat lost or not detected by windows. Even at DOS promt, only my 5GB hard disc and CD ROM drive can be accessed.. Request if you could help me on this..

I have two IDE hard disk same brand, one is 5GB the other one 10GB. Both hard disk has an existing windows 95 OS and both are configured master. And in my existing setup, im only using the 5GB set as the master with CD drive. I want to make my 10GB as my slave, so i followed the setting of the hard disc jumper , cable and bios for it to be a slave. I have set the 10GB as my secondary IDE slave. When I reset my system, the BIOS has auto detected both of my hard disc. The 5GB as the primary master and the 10GB as the secondary slave. Problem is under windows only my 5GB has a drive letter assignment (C:) my CD drive (D:). The 10GB is somewhat lost or not detected by windows. Even at DOS promt, only my 5GB hard disc and CD ROM drive can be accessed.. Request if you could help me on this..