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Any computer techs in the house?

agman1999
Ok, I just bought a new XP machine for my house, since the old one went belly up and didn't seem to be worth fixing. My new machine uses a SATA drive, while my old one is a Western Digital EIDE. I'd like to install the drive from my old XP machine into the new one as a secondary drive, since it has so much info and software on it. It looks like I'll have to piggyback the EIDE drive onto the lead for the CD ROM drive, but I'm struggling with the jumper settings. Can anybody walk me through this?
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8 comments

Date Votes
  • iwannausername
    40 pin ide or 80 pin? if it is 80 pin, put both drives on cable select and plug 'em in. Same for 40 pin, but on 40 if you want you can set one drive as master and one drive as slave. Some drives also have a "master, no slave present" setting. And SCSI devices need a terminator in the chain.
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  • shoff14
    Set your jumper setting for the CD ROM as the master and the hard drive as Slave. CD roms don't like cable select most of the time, because usually the first thing to spin up is a CD drive according to the bios.

    So in order to do this, go to the wester digital website and search for your hard drives jumper settings, WD has a nice little picture to show you where to put the jumper settings for each model. Your model number will be on the drive some where. Most CD drives have a picture of it on the drive stamped into the metal. Adjust the jumpers to the pictures as advised above. Then put the CD drive on the end of the IDE cable, and the hard drive on the middle connector on the cable, then plug the cable back into the motherboard. Plug the power back into the CD drive and then other power cable into the hard drive and you should be good to go. If you can't get the little jumper out, use some needle nose pliers.

    However, there might be slight complications if for some reason your bios selects your old hard drive to boot, if this happens your drivers on your old hard drive will not work with the new motherboard. You need to shut your computer off manually, pull the power cord if you have to. Reboot and get into the bios by whatever button combination necessary, then remove your old hard drive from the boot menu.
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  • buschmaster
    I use nothing but western digital drives, and have NEVER had cable select work right. put it on "master" all by itself if you want to guarantee it'll work with no hassle.

    ...unless like you said, you're going to "piggyback" the hard drive onto the CD rom cable: both on at the same time? you can do that. whatever's on the end of the cable WILL BE master. however, since your CDROM drive is ATA33, your hard drive will default to ATA33 as well. it'll be slow as a molasses covered snail in february.

    either you have 2 IDE cables you can use, 1 for CD the other for hard drive,

    or you have 1 IDE cable, in which case remove the CDROM, put your HDD on it and xfer the data to your nice new HDD, put the CDROM back and sell the IDE HDD on eBay.

    note, your CDROM uses a 40-wire IDE cable, which is limited to ATA66. if you want the higher speed your IDE hard drive is capable of (probably ATA133, ATA100) you MUST use a 80-wire ATA cable. or else it will default to the highest speed allowed by the cable. ATA66. again, if it's also got a ATA33 device on it, it will default to that lower speed.

    or get a PCI IDE adapter card.

    btw, they're all 40 pin. they just use different ribbon cables.
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  • shoff14
    quote:Originally posted by buschmaster


    or get a PCI IDE adapter card.




    And then you would still be limited to the speed of the PCI slot, which is still slower then hooking it up with the CD drive.
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  • agman1999
    Thanks for the comments guys. Lost my internet connection during the storm last night, so I couldn't get back on and post that I solved the issue.

    Since I couldn't get on here and play around, I had time to concentrate on what I was doing, and experiment a little. Finally unhooked the CD ROM, and connected the old HD at it's intended permanent connection, the middle connection on the IDE cable. Had the drive jumpered to Slave. Went into the bios, which recognized my old hard drive, but put it ahead of the new drive in the boot order. Swapped their positions in the boot sequence, and rebooted. Worked like a charm. Reconnected the CD ROM, and everything continued to work properly.

    I think it's going to work fine. I'm going to clear the program files off of the old drive, and just leave my old documents and stuff on it. I found my box of software, so I don't have to be concerned with trying to move my registry entries and such over to the new drive. It seems to pull files quickly enough for what I'm doing, and it lets me keep my personal stuff separated from my business docs.
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  • 1911a1-fan
    glad you got it to work

    but guys he said sata drive, there is no master ot cable select, not all bios will allow you to run sata, and a ata 133 hd at the same time, two totally different beast
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  • shoff14
    quote:Originally posted by 1911a1fan
    glad you got it to work

    but guys he said sata drive, there is no master ot cable select, not all bios will allow you to run sata, and a ata 133 hd at the same time, two totally different beast


    you did not read his question. His old drive is not a SATA drive. There isn't a board on the market now that won't let you do both. The tricky part is getting windows to know that it is supposed to use the SATA drive. Thats why the first thing you do is load the SATA drivers before you load windows. There are only a few CD drives on the market that use SATA technology. How do you think the rest are hooked up?

    Glad you got it figured out by yourself. A little thinking and problem solving goes a long way.
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  • 1911a1-fan
    yes i did, you cannot run an eide on sata, as the other replies stated to run them on cable select which sata does not offer, their responses does not aply to sata, and as i stated some bios does not allow you to run a sata drive as master, and an ata drive as slave period

    if your bios is running j micron you will not be able to run ata hd at all, it is strictly sata

    read my post a bit closer this time, i was razzen some of the members who posted suggestions that imply he is running eide, not everyone even knows what sata is

    edit, yes you can run sata hd, and eide cd/dvd, but not sata hd master eide slave hd
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