Intro | Case/Power | Motherboard | CPU | RAM | Hard Drive | Floppy Drive | CD-ROM | Final Steps | Quiz



The hard drive is a disk drive that reads data stored on hard disks. It is also called a hard disk drive.

You need a hard drive to store large amounts of data such as your operating system, your programs, other files for your program, and personal files.


"If you look at the rear side of an IDE hard drive it should look similar to the image below."*

HDD Rear

"The IDE/ATA connector is on the left hand side which consists of many pins. Next to the IDE connector is the jumper setting for the drive. The jumper should be set to Master, which is the default setting for a new HDD. Any other device sharing the same IDE cable should be set to Slave. Different HDD has different jumper settings, please refer to your HDD manual for more information. On the right hand side, next to the jumpers is the power connector. Every device except FDD uses this type of power connector. Figure 1 and 2 below shows what an ATA 66 and a power cable looks like. The ATA 66 cable which is also known as UDMA 66 cable is an advance IDE cable, which offers higher performance and data integrity than the standard IDE cable. ATA 66 cable consists of 80 conductor cable where as the standard IDE cable consists of 40 conductor cable. I am using an ATA 66 cable because the above HDD is an ATA 100 drive which requires an ATA 66 cable."*

ATA 66 Cable

Figure 1 - ATA 66 Cable**

 

Power connector

Figure 2 - Power cable**

"Place your hard drive into the HDD mounting slot of your case, make sure the IDE/ATA connector is facing outwards. Screw the HDD to the case using screws provided with the HDD or the ATX case."*

Screw HDD

"Insert the ATA 66 cable into the ATA connector of the HDD. Make sure the pin 1 on the cable is connected to pin 1 on the HDD connector. Pin 1 is the red or pink strip on the edge of an ATA cable. Most new IDE/ATA cables are designed so that it will only go in one way which will correspond to pin 1."*

Connect ATA Cable

"Push the power cable into the power connector as shown. The power cable is designed to go in one way, so you shouldn't have any problems."*

Connect Power Cable

"Connect the other end of the ATA 66 cable to the primary ATA socket of your motherboard as shown. Make sure the pin 1 on the cable connects to the pin 1 on the ATA socket."*

Connect ATA Cable



Floppy Drive


Disclaimer: We are not responsible for any damage that you may incur while following our instructions.
*Information courtesy of Buildeasypc.com
**Pictures courtesy of Buildeasypc.com

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