Thread: TO Remove an IDE Hard Drive

Hard drives are a little more difficult. You have to know what you want to do with the hard drive. By this, I mean either you want it set to either SLAVE or MASTER. If you want to boot from the hard drive then you want it to be your master. If you already have a master, and you want to use this as extra space, set this hdd to slave. This setting change requires a jumper on the back of the hard drive to be moved. It may sound hard, but it's easy. These jumper configurations can be found on the back of the hdd; most have a small label which states which way is which.

Once setting the jumper, take the IDE cable that runs to your primary hard drive. This is the long, generally grey cable that runs from a slot on your motherboard to your primary hard drive. If you are putting your new hdd in as a slave, this cable should have a second connector on it not being used. Join this to the new slave hard drive, but don't unplug the cable from your other HDD.

One time the hard drive is all connected, make sure it is fastened to the chasis on both sides of the case. This can be done by removing the case, then bolting the hard drive on one side and then the other. This is important if you only bolt one side of the HDD, it can lead to corruption of files on the HDD.

Thanks for such an useful information provided in this post.