Building Your Own Computer – Part Five
Before installing the hard drives and optical drives in the computer case,
they should be configured properly. The newer SATA drives do not
need to be configured at all and can be simply installed in the case,
but the traditional ATA (also called IDE or EIDE) drives have jumpers
that set them as either
Motherboards with an IDE interface have two channels for hard
drives, optical drives, or tape drives. Each channel can have two
drives connected to it. Because there is only one cable for each
channel, the drives need a way to identify themselves to the
motherboard, and for this reason they are set as either master or slave.
The usual configuration is to put the hard drives on IDE channel 1
and the optical drives on IDE channel 2, although there is no reason
not to mix optical and hard drives on the same channel. If you
only have one drive of each type, you should install each of them on
its own channel.
There are jumpers on the back of the drive allowing you to set it as
master, slave, or cable select. The cable select option
automatically assigns a master/slave status to a drive depending on
which connection it is using. The connection furthest from the
motherboard is the master connection, while the connection in the
middle of the cable is the slave connection.
The jumper positions should be clearly marked on the drive
itself. If not, consult the manual. Use a pair of needle
nose pliers or tweezers to insert the jumpers on the proper pins.
If you are installing just a single drive on each channel, they
should each be set as the master drive. If you have two hard
drives, the one with the operating system will be the master
drive. If you have two optical drives, for example one CD-ROM and
one DVD drive, it doesn't matter which one is set to master and which
one to slave. The master/slave setting is really just to
distinguish one drive from the other -- master doesn't have any higher
priority than slave.
Now attach the data cables. These are the wide flat ribbon
cables that run from the motherboard to the drive. IDE cables
have three connectors. The two connectors which are close
together are attached to the hard drives. The third connector is
attached to the motherboard. The connectors are keyed so it is
easy to see how the cable is inserted.
Remember that the master drive is at the end of the cable and the
slave drive is in the middle of the cable. To verify the cable is
correct, make sure that pin 1 is connected to the red wire on the cable.
It is now time to install the drives in the case. The two
drives which are on a single channel should be installed close together
with the master drive on top and the slave drive on the bottom.
Optical drives are usually installed at the top of the case and hard
drives below them. The optical drives must be accessible from the
front of the case so the bay coverings need to be removed. The
drives are secured to the case with two screws on each side.
The final step is to connect the power cables. IDE drives have
a four pin molded connector which is impossible to put in the wrong
way. SATA drives also have a keyed power connector, but some
models may have both a SATA power connector and a four pin IDE power
connector. You can use either one, but DO NOT use both.
