Adding a Second Hard Drive

You can do any of the above, but the circuits on the bottom of the drive cannot be touching metal and the air holes on the top cannot be covered.

Thanks a bunch!

Also, if the second drive is a 'slave' drive, make sure the jumper/s on the back are set correctly and after you install it, double check the BIOS to make sure the drive is detected.

If you don't have the space, you could invest in a drive caddie which sits in a spare CD Rom bay.
I have 2 fitted, and I only paid about £8 UK each for them brand new.

Not too sure if it would be wise to put it on its side. It's still a mechanical devise, with spinning elements, which may not like being put on their side.

Not too sure if it would be wise to put it on its side. It's still a mechanical devise, with spinning elements, which may not like being put on their side.

A conventional drive will not be happy at all .... you can find drives designed to run 'on their side' but they are not common.
Hippy has the most practical solution.

Just from personal expierience, I found a 4Gig IBM Travelstar laptop drive in a junk box..I have a special little adapter board I purchased for 6bucks at Frys Electronics used to allow a laptop drive to be installed as a slave...Ive been using it for storage now literaly hanging out off the IDE cable for a year now..It works awesome, But I dont recommend it..This is just to point out that drives will take abuse if you so desire to cut corners..NOT RECOMMENDED just pointing out how mean I am to the little drive.and it still works sweet...

Had no dramas what-so-ever in mounting a drive on its side, upside down, on end, any way you like...it will not affect them.....even rotating them while in operation...provided no impact acceleration beyond a [usually] stated limit....[possibility of head-crash].

The only drives that may spit dummies are CD-Rom varieties that may not securely 'hold' the disk while the drawer closes.....though deft fingers can overcome that, too...

Yeah, they don't work too well in a centrifuge, but apart from that...

The only other thing to watch is what maximum size your BIOS will accept. Even some newer ones only go up to 128Mb. Though you can fool XP into seeing it ok, programs which run in DOS on boot wont work ie Powerquest Drive Image, Norton Ghost etc.

128gig is an ata limitation, not a bios issue as such....ata66 creates the limit and, as I recall, even Promise [for their ide expansion cards] doesn't have a bios fix for that but requires you to go to an ata100 instead...

Drives can be mounted in just about any confiuration you like, though I would personally stay away from mounting them upside down. IBM, Compaq, Dell, HP, PackardBell(ewww) and all the other Corporation each have or had systems with a side mounted Hard Drive at one point or another.

I'd go with Hippys suggestion, you can get a rail kit which allows you to install a drive in the 5 1/4 floppy bay which is now used for CD installations amoung other things. Make sure that you have Both drives jumpers set correctly.

Drive 0: Master/with Slave
Drive 1: Slave

other than that, always remember heat is not your computer or any of the components friend

Anyone who is not on a laptop and stuck with ATA100, should move up to ATA133 when the times comes about for change. Having the newest is not always the best suggestion, but, when it comes to such a thing as IDE ports it is well worth the upgrade. You can get the Promise and other addon board/ports for less than $30.00 US which will add 4 IDE ports at the highest rated speed and Hard Drive size...

Egghead Online is always having a sale on such things to draw people to the site for other discounted hardware...

The hell with IDE... Get a serial ATA drive. WAY FASTER.

Big difference in price per GIG also..

Serial "IDE" is faster, but to HELL with Serial IDE, SCSI is much faster, but to HELL with SCSI because Memory Drive are even Faster yet again!
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Well IP you crack me up. My new HD will be a serial ATA drive as my new mobo will have Serial ATA hookups.

Kona....mine has two serial ata connectors....and it looks quite weird when the bios has addresses for six drives, rather than the usual 4....then I go and put on an expansion card so I have the capacity [when I get some sata drives] for 10.....[I actually do have 7]....

Kona

We aim to please, You aim too please !

A hard drive doesn't need a bay like CD Rom drives or floppy drives. This is because the drive doesn't need to be accessible from the outside of the case. Most cases have an extra slot below the primary hard drive. Most hard drives have jumper cables already built-in for a second hard drive. Just configure the second one to work as a slave, or you will have big problems. And before you place it sideways or upside down, make sure the drive documentation says that it can work properly that way.

Again....I am yet to find one that won't work on its side or upside down.

The oldest was a 40 meg monster from an XT clone, complete with separate external driver card and two ribbon cables and the newest is a Maxtor 160 gig 7200....but as I said, no issues with orientation at all....

Maxtor 160 gig 7200

I've two of em

The reason I mentioned not mounting upside down is mostly because of the design of the arms holding the heads between the platters. Older drive design did in fact leave a certain amount of travel (slop) after a drive had been in operation for a period of time.

Heck I have had drives stacked on top of each other sitting on the desk with the cables run into the open Case , ummm, hasn't everyone?

I bet you have Paul

I even had an old Segate Bigfoot that I would have to rap with something handy at times to get it to spin up . I have a couple of drives that I pulled apart so I can take them up to the school each year and use for tools to explain how data is stored on hard drives. Haven't been up there this year, don't think I will make it too much going on.

I definitely agree with Jafo on this. I'm pretty sure all hard drives will operate just fine on their side. The drive rack in my case at home sits sideways and I've never had a single problem with any of the drives in the case. In fact much like Drop125 I've put HD's in my case just hanging from the IDE cable and it worked just fine. I wouldn't recommend it for a long term solution but it will work until you can get a bigger case. As far as propping it up on it's side I would make sure that it is leaning against something else in your case because the rotation of the platters might cause it to fall over otherwise and that wouldn't be a good thing

Good Luck!

lP...yes....dangling them is just one of those things you do....and banging  a Bigfoot is the only way to get the buggers spinning....done that as well....massive bloody thing for a 2gig drive....eventually threw it out, though almost turned it into a clock, as some like to do...

#6 by craeonics - 11/23/2003 8:11:17 AM Not too sure if it would be wise to put it on its side. It's still a mechanical devise, with spinning elements, which may not like being put on their side.

I add to this motion. DO NOT run a HD on it's side or upside down, reason for this is because the heads could get out of line and scratch the platters or it just goes out of sync and this is how corruption can happen. I'm almost positive that even the instructions on a HD says this. I think I shred all of my papers so I can't look that up. But in alot of my PC classes, they tell you this. Plus avoid alot of bouncing, most damage is caused if the platters are still spinning. I'm sure that notebook drives are different and use a different method to protect them from damage like a conventional HD.

Suggestion: Since you don't have anymore room in your system. Try creating a removable harddrive that attaches to your USB or something like that. You can build one with parts or buy one that does it.

/me is done

No...notebook drives are just smaller and there's therefore less fly-wheel effect.  Modern drives properly 'park' their heads off-platter so there's less chance of damage even when dropped [provided the drive is not in the midst of a read-write].

I have a couple of dozen drives here....and I bet if I check them all they'll be unlikely to make reference to preferential placement....