Need help installing new hard drive

J

Jskid

Posts: 348   +1
Hello,

I'm trying to install a new hard drive but I am stuck because I can't figure out where to plug the power into it.





There's a bunch of wires coming out of my power supply, each group terminates with a rectangular object with 4 prongs sticking out, I'm guessing this is where I'm suppose to power the hard drive, but it doesn't fit.

EDIT: I'd be happy to upload higher quality images but ImageShack is putting a cap on the size
 
That is a SATA drive. You need a SATA power cable, (Big L) and a SATA connector (Little L)

You appear to have an older type power supply which does not have SATA plugs. The old 4 pin MOLEX power supply is used for older hard drives (the ones that came with the big wide grey cables).

You need one of these gizmos:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...151&cm_re=pata_to_sata-_-12-200-151-_-Product

Plug one end into the power supply, the other into your hard drive (the bigger L)

Does your motherboard have a SATA slot on it? If your PSU does not have SATA plugs, your motherboard may not have them either. A SATA slot on your motherboard will look like the smaller of the two "L's" on the picture, and have a little box around it. There SATA cable, which looks like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...20079&cm_re=sata_cable-_-12-120-079-_-Product

will need to be plugged into the motherboard and into the smaller plug on the hard drive.
 
Well you see here's the story. I have an old computer and I came across an old hard drive. I decided to put the hard drive into the computer, but the hard drive is Sata 2 and my motherboard is only EIDE. So I bought this so I can connect a Sata 2 hard drive. So I need to buy a power adapter which connects to my existing power supply, that the hard drive can connect to (bigger L)?
 
Yep the adapter should do the trick.

One thing I'm not sure about is if a computer will boot from that card, if that's your only hard drive.
 
gwailo247 said:
Yep the adapter should do the trick.

One thing I'm not sure about is if a computer will boot from that card, if that's your only hard drive.
Click to expand...

It's these sort of unforeseen problems that make me not want to spend anymore money on this computer. If I have a hard drive directly attached to the computer will this be an issue? Any thing else I should check to make sure before proceeding?
 
I Googled around, I found a review of a similar card by the same manufacturer on Newegg, and the guy said he can't boot from it, and there was no rebuttal from the manufacturer like in other complaints, so I assume its a valid complaint. However it was not exactly the same card so this may not be the case.

I would just Google the name of your card along with 'boot drive' and see if anyone has said anything about it in reviews, or you can e-mail the manufacturer, they seem to be responsive from what i saw on Newegg.

So if the card won't work as a boot drive, and you want to make the computer work, you can return the card, which costs about 40 dollars, and buy a EIDE, or PATA as they're now called, LOL. I saw 500 GB for 60 bucks on newegg.ca.

Other than that you should be ok, if the computer worked before, then it should still work, the addition of a new hard drive shouldn't make it not function all of a sudden.
 
hmmm still hasn't arrived. I'm not use to ordering things online, does newegg have a number I can call? I wrote down the customer purchase number.
 
All right got the RAID controller. I wasn't able to install the OS on it and I tried 2 different Windows XP cd's.

The first simply could not see the hard drive.
The second could see it as a PCI hard drive (or something) but every time I tried installing to it,it it made me format the hard drive, and it kept saying the hard drive needed to be formated.

So I put in an old hard drive and was able to install and boot Windows XP Pro. From My Computer I can see another hard drive (the one attached through PCI). I can format it, but it always says "not accessible".

Is there a way I can test to see if the hard drive is defective or at least if the RAID controller is working properly?

Every time I boot up the computer it says press F4 to setup the raid controller and it gives me options to setup RAID 0, 1 etc. I shouldn't need to touch that right?

There was no instructions in the box:mad:
 
Hm. Well I would presume that the RAID card is not defective, but you never know.

Why don't you try hooking up the hard drive that worked to the RAID card, and see if it will boot. Since the company says that you can use it as a boot drive, then you should be able to use that hard drive to test it.
 
gwailo247 said:
Hm. Well I would presume that the RAID card is not defective, but you never know.

Why don't you try hooking up the hard drive that worked to the RAID card, and see if it will boot. Since the company says that you can use it as a boot drive, then you should be able to use that hard drive to test it.
Click to expand...

You mean the hard drive that I have the OS installed on right now? That's an EIDE and the RAID only has SATA ports.
 
Oh yah. =/

Well the trick to troubleshooting usually involves changing one variable at a time, but the lack of a second SATA drive is going to make it difficult to see if your original drive is the problem, or the RAID card. Is there a way for you to borrow a drive from someone?

You may want to contact the company that sold the card and see if they can offer you some tech support in terms of getting it working.

I'm just not sure how you can isolate the problem without getting a new hard drive.
 
All right will do. It may take a few days so I'll get back to you as soon as I can borrow another SATA.
 
I'm guessing that a SSD would probably not reach its full potential based on the age of your motherboard. And you still don't know if the RAID card is the problem or not. An SSD would introduce more complications into the mix. Its not a bad investment if you can put it into another computer eventually, but I'm not sure this is your ideal solution for your particular problem.

But then I don't own a SSD card, so perhaps someone else can give you a better opinion.
 
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