Learn how to install a hard drive in just 5 minutes! 

Installing a hard drive is much much easier than you think. Ok ok, EVERYTHING is much easier
than you think. But ok, here we go. But I promise you this one is gonna be easy! Maybe 10 minutes!

First off, you have to buy a hard drive that matches your motherboard ata connectors. The older motherboards
will have regular Ultra IDE Ultra-ATA, which is also known as Parallel IDE (P-ATA) hard drives.
The newer motherboards from about 2003 and later will use Serial ATA (S-ATA). The 2 are easily
distinguished by the data cable they use. The older P-ATA drives use a flat wide grey ribbon cable
that has been around for years. The newer S-ATA drives will use a much thinner small cable for
data transfer. Some newer S-ATA drives use the old molex power connector for power, and some will
use a S-ATA power connector, and some will give you an option for both.





If you are installing an S-ATA drive, your work is cut out for you. Simply connect the S-ATA data
cable from the back of your hard drive to a free S-ATA port on your motherboard. The cable is
shaped in a way that it can only fit into the ports in one direction. As for the power, use
whichever power cable your hard drive needs and plug it into the hard drive. If your HD requires a
S-ATA power cable, you can use an adapter that will convert a regular molex power connector into a
Serial-ATA power connector. Or you can buy a new power supply that already has S-ATA power
connectors built-in. If you HD allows for usage of BOTH the molex AND S-ATA power connectors, it
is important that you ONLY USE ONE! If you plug in 2 power connectors, you are giving the drive
too much power which will damage it!







If you are installing an older P-ATA hard drive, you will have to understand some small details. Every
hard drive will have instructions either in a manual or a diagram on the hard drive or even
abbreviated letters on the bottom of the drive that shows you how to set the hard drive jumper. In
the older motherboards, there is only 1 IDE port for the hard drives to connect to and you can
only plug 1 IDE cable into each port. Now each IDE cable will have 3 connectors on it, allowing
you to connect 2 HD's to the IDE cable, which then connects to the motherboard.

(In case you don't know what the "jumper" is, it's the little tiny rectangle 2-pin connector
that's connecting some pins on the back of your HD) Now, there are 3 ways for you to set the
jumper on your HD.

Master (MA) - Use this setting if the hard drive will be the MAIN hard drive in your system that
your operating system (Windows, Linux) will boot from.

Slave (SL) - Use this setting if the hard drive will be the secondary hard drive in your PC

Cable Select (CS) - Use this setting if you want the cable position to decide. This means if your
HD is connected to the very end of the cable, it will be set as MASTER, and if your HD is
connected to the middle of the cable, it will be set as SLAVE. (I highly advise against using this
setting. It is always better to set the drive manually as either a master or slave!)


Now that you've gotten your HD plugged in with the data cable and power cable. Go ahead and turn
it on! If for some reason your hard drive doesn't show up, CHECK THE JUMPER POSITIONS. If you have
2 HD's set to Master or Slave it will cause a conflict and problems.



All should go well and once you get to Windows, you should be able to see the full size of your
hard drive.







Q: I'm installing Windows on my brand new hard drive and it only shows up as 137gb but my hard
drive is actually much bigger than that!

A: Windows setup can't detect the full size of your hard drive. You will be able to see the rest
of your hard drive space by finishing the Windows install and/or following the instruction manual
that came with your hard drive.


I hope this guide helped somebody out there and thanks for reading.

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