It is a common occurrence for one needing to change his IDE drive (Integrated Device Electronics) drive. Either because your drive is bad and you want to replace it, the hard disk is full or has low space and you want to upgrade it or you want to upgrade your CD/DVD drive to a better one. After reading this hub, you will be able top install on your own any IDE drive of your choice and save the money you would have given to your technician to do it for you.

Before installing a new IDE drive, you should first of all answer these questions:

1. Does your desktop case have enough compartments to fit in the drive?

2. Will the drive controller support the new drive? If not, a second or updated controller might be needed.

3. Are there enough data and power cable to install the drive?

4. Will the computer BIOS and operating system support the storage capacity of the drive?

If your answers to these questions is yes, then you are ready to install your drive. If not, you must first of all correct the problem before installing your drive; else your drive may not work properly.

Having answered the above questions, let us proceed to install our drive.

Procedure:

1. Get all the required documentation for your drive and computer.

2. Shut down the computer and unplug the power cord from the mains and computer.

3. Get your Philips screw driver; this will be used to open the case of your computer and to fix all screws in your computer.

4. Touch the metal part of your screw driver or your computer case to discharge all static charge in your hand. This is to avoid damages to devices in the computer due to Electro Static Discharge (ESD).

5. Set the jumper pins for your drive. If you are installing an additional drive, set the jumper to slave. If it is the only drive, then set it to master.

6. Connect the IDE cable to the drive, the longer end of the cable goes to the master drive, while the shorter goes to the slave drive. The cable connector and the ports are designed in such a way that it fits only in one direction so it is impossible to fix it wrongly. But for clarity, pin 1 of the drive port goes to the red wire of the IDE cable.

7. Connect the power cable.

NB: The diagram above shows the different ports in the IDE hard drive. The port by the left is the port where you plug in the IDE cable, the middle port is where you set your jumper (check your drive documentation on how to set jumpers) and the port by the right hand side is the power port, where you plug in your power cable.

8. Install the drive to its bay. This is done from the inside of the computer case without removing the bay covering. But for CD/DVD drive, you have to remove the bay covering and install the drive from the outside of the computer case before connecting the cables. All CD/DVD drive should be set to slave.

9. Replace the case of your computer, screw it, reconnect the power cable, boot up your computer and run the CMOS setup utility to recognize the new drive.

Bravo! You just completed installing an IDE drive. If you encounter any problems doing this or have any question or comment, feel free to post your it in the comment box or better still, send me an email.