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Adding Hard Drive To Dell Dimension 2400 (Read 222 times)

Aug 25^th, 2009 at 6:08am

DazzleStar Offline
Colonel
Beeston, UK

Gender:
Posts: 62

Hi, just got a few (a lot) of questions about adding a hard drive to this PC.

First let me say this: I'm 15, so am relatively new to PC upgrades so please be patient. Grin

At the moment I have an 80gb IDE hard drive, which is slowly filling up. I'm thinking about adding another 80gb hard drive to my system, I can pick one up for £20! Shocked

I don't think I'm capable of reinstalling Windows, but I probably will do it after more research, as I heard just having XP and FSX on a single hard drive is good for performance?

But then there's the problems. At the moment there is only one bracket for a hard drive, and even though another can be added, they're quite hard to come across (cheap) in the UK. Secondly the IDE cable doesn't have a slave plug, but the one for the DVD drive does, so could I just swap them? How do I set the jumper, would it just be cable select and auto in the BIOS? Sorry about all of the questions... Embarrassed

At least I have the reassurance that I can't lose any of my current data.

My specs:
Dell Dimension 2400
2.66GHz Pentium 4
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256mb
1gb DDR memory
80gb Seagate hard drive

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Reply #1 - Aug 25^th, 2009 at 10:05pm

757200ba Offline
Colonel
757200-THOR of the skys
Florida

Gender:
Posts: 516

Well you can swap the cable.One side goes to the MB the other two for your HD.The cable as 3 ways out one connects to the MB, the middle after you conect to the MB goes to the secondary Hd jumper on "slave" the far end goes to the primary, jumper on master.Im presuming that you will use your new HD for backup.

About instaling windows is very straight forward.Make sure you have all your drivers at least the ones for the chipset, and Lan and all that, usualy its the cd that cames with your MB.Because with Lan you will be able to connect to the net and get the rest of your drivers.Then pass all your "data" to the secondary HD ( i would advise a larger disk so you dont have problems with "room"). Wink

Then you need to select the boot order on your bios, make sure that it is on cd rom.After you are done with your "transfer of data".Reboot your pc with windows cd in your dc rom drive.Fallow the steps, if your HD are sata dont forget to press f6 when windows ask you if you have a a sata disk he might ask you for the driver.Then after loading the most important files he will ask you to format the HD.Do it and windows will instal.After the instal, instal the chipset drivers (that you will find on your MB cd).By this time you will be able to connect to the net and tell us if you had any problems. Cheesy

.But i guess you will be ok.then install video, sound, and you are ready to go.

Now one question how are you getting along with FSX? With your system, i guess its better you have FS9. At least you will be more happy with your machine.Even for FS9 you need some more things.Like, 1gb more of RAMand the video card needs to go.But for now solve your "room" problem then we can help you to do the rest.

Hope it helped. Cool

Keep us posted if you have any problems.
Cheers

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Reply #2 - Aug 26^th, 2009 at 5:41am

DazzleStar Offline
Colonel
Beeston, UK

Gender:
Posts: 62

Firstly, stupid mistake, I couldn't swap the cable as the one plugged into the HDD wouldn't reach the disk drive! Embarrassed

But I could just buy this: http://www.diskdepot.co.uk/acatalog/datawrite-dual-device-ide-ribbon-half-metre.... for 47p lol.

As for the new HDD I am planning on using it for everything. If I do a fresh install of windows I will backup my OS, and turn system restore off. I have also been looking into partitioning it. I was thinking about having a 30gb partition as the first on the new drive just for FSX and addons. I should hopefully see a small increase in performance as it is read quicker and less clutter in its area. I'm not sure about reinstalling Windows, don't want to mess anything up. I might even install Ubuntu beforehand so I can use that if anything goes wrong.

I'm surprisingly happy with FSX at the moment. I followed NickN's XP optimizing guide to get everything running at its peak and it is surprisingly smooth. I don't think I could step down to FS9 after playing FSX for so long!

Thanks for the help! I'll have a think about reinstalling XP. Undecided

My specs:
Dell Dimension 2400
2.66GHz Pentium 4
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256mb
1gb DDR memory
80gb Seagate hard drive

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