Member Avatar for jayder

I'm trying to install a new hd but i can't because one ide ribbon is hooked to my cdrw and the the other is hooked to my hd and my dvdrw and the third on is hooked stright to the floppy.and all the ribbons are token up.how can i hook the new hd up.

jay

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rcrevolution

Dani AI

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Several replies in this thread (, , , ) pointed toward freeing an IDE channel or using an external enclosure. The immediate confusion in 's post is likely the floppy cable: floppy drives use a 34‑pin Berg cable and are not interchangeable with 40‑pin IDE ribbons. Most PCs of that era have two IDE channels (primary and secondary), each can host up to two devices.

If the goal is to fit the new hard drive without removing hardware, follow these practical steps:

  • Identify each cable: the IDE ribbon is 40‑pin (often with three connectors); the floppy cable is 34‑pin and much narrower. The red stripe on an IDE ribbon marks pin 1.
  • Check each drive's jumper block and the sticker diagram. If the existing HDD holds your OS, leave it set as Master. Set the new drive to Slave (or set both to Cable Select and use end = master, middle = slave on a three‑connector cable).
  • Use a free Molex power plug for the new drive (floppy Berg power is different). Plug the data cable with the red stripe toward pin 1 on the drive.

After wiring, enter the BIOS to confirm both drives are detected. If they are, proceed to the OS disk manager to initialize/partition/format the new disk. If BIOS does not detect it, recheck jumper positions, cable seating, and power.

If there really are no free IDE connectors and removing an optical drive is not acceptable, options are adding a PCI IDE/SATA controller (note: some cards are not bootable without their own BIOS) or putting the drive in a USB enclosure. For best performance avoid pairing a hard drive with an optical on the same IDE channel, and always handle drives on an anti‑static surface.

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Member Avatar for Catweazle

Get rid of one of the optical drives is the most sensible approach. Your DVD burner will also burn CDS, Read DVDs and CDs etc etc.

In your situation, I'd be ditching either the DVD-ROM or the CD burner ;)

Member Avatar for jifiii

Yes I would do the same thing, the DVD burner will also burn regular CD's and also play DVD's, so I would get rid of one of the other two optical drives. OR there is a second option, you can buy one of those enclosures boxes that lets you turn an internal drive into a USB drive. Either way you want to do it.

Member Avatar for Coconut Monkey

When you do retire one of your optical drives (highly recommended - you don't need 3!), have the 2 hard drives on one IDE channel (i.e. one cable between them) and the two optical drives on another. Since optical drives use a different transfer protocol to that of a hard drive, performance will be slower if they share a channel.

Member Avatar for rcrevolution

ditch the cd burner, with the dvdrom and dvd burner u can copy both dvd and cds on the fly, U cant do dvds if U ditch the dvd rom

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