Installing A Hard Drive – Step by Step

by on Jul 30, 2007 | 162 comments

Introduction

Welcome to PCMech! If you run into any trouble following this guide or installing your hard drive, feel free to join our forums at http://forum.pcmech.com and ask for help, someone will be glad to help. For continued tips, tricks, and updates on our content, you might also consider signing up for our newsletter by entering your email address into the textbox to the right.  We are here to help!

Before Installation

Installing a hard drive is a medium level job. If you are confident in yourself and would like to save the money a computer guy would charge to do it, go ahead and do it yourself. It won’t be that bad. The physical installation is actually pretty easy. Getting it ready for use takes a little longer.

The worst part about installing hard drives is setting the jumpers on the drive so that it works correctly with your current hardware. You only need to worry about jumpers if you are using an IDE hard drive. IDE hard drives have settings for master, slave and cable select. This is because, for an IDE drive, it matters. For Serial ATA drives (SATA), you don’t need to worry about jumpers at all. Now that SATA is becoming much more prevalent than IDE, it is becoming a lot less likely that you will need to worry about jumpers during this process.

Before installation, inspect the inside of the computer’s case and determine where you want the drive to go. If you are using an IDE hard drive, you want to optimally connect the drive on a different IDE channel than your DVD/CD drives. Most motherboards have two IDE channel connectors. So you would put your disc drives on IDE2 and your hard drives on IDE1. For SATA drives, your life, again, got easier. SATA gets it’s own channel and, as of this date, SATA DVD drives are very uncommon.

Materials Required

  • Hard drive
  • Copy of the hard drive manual (if you need to set jumpers; this can be downloaded if your drive didn’t come with one)
  • Controller card (optional; use this if you don’t have a spare connector on the motherboard or space on an existing ribbon cable to connect your drive to. Make sure you get one that matches your drive – Serial ATA for an SATA drive; ATA/100 or ATA/133 for an IDE drive; SCSI for a SCSI drive.)
  • Data cable for the drive (if you aren’t installing the drive as a slave on an existing cable)
  • Power cable Y-splitter (if you don’t have a spare power connector)
  • Ultimate Boot CD (if you want to clone your old hard drive to your new one)

How will you be using your new drive?

If you are replacing your primary hard drive, make sure you back up any data you want to save before you start. If you don’t want to reinstall Windows, you can clone the contents of your old hard drive to your new one using the setup utilities that hard drive manufacturers provide, or you can use a specific cloning program like HDClone or PC Inspector Clone Maxx. All of the above-mentioned utilities are available on the Ultimate Boot CD, so you can download and burn that and then choose the utility that is easiest for you to understand. (If you don’t have access to a high-speed internet connection, you can order a CD for a small fee.)

If you are willing to reinstall Windows, make sure you have discs for Windows and all your programs. This will prevent frustrations about losing programs after you have already formatted your computer.

If you are simply installing a secondary hard drive for storage, you don’t have to make any changes to the configuration of your current hard drive. If, however, you are installing a second IDE drive, it is possible that you will need to alter the jumper configuration of your primary hard drive. If your current hard drive is set as “Cable Select” (meaning it is the only drive on the channel), then you may need to change it to “Master” which will allow you to add the second hard drive as a slave (see below).

Setting Jumpers: IDE Drives

IDE can accommodate two drives per channel, with most computers having two channels built in. The primary drive on a channel is called the Master, and the secondary one is called the Slave. The IDE channels are also labeled as Primary (or IDE1) and Secondary (or IDE2). The hard drive that the system boots from is usually the primary master. Generally, if you’re adding a second hard drive you would set it up as the primary slave. (The secondary master and slave are usually used for optical drives, although they can accommodate hard drives if needed.)

Most drives come set to be used as masters, so if you want to use one as a slave, you’ll have to change the jumpers, which are located between the power connector and the IDE connector. Each manufacturer has different jumper settings, so I can’t give you exact instructions here. However, there is often a diagram on the top of the drive telling you how to set the jumpers, and if not there will certainly be instructions in your hard drive’s manual (which you can download from the manufacturer’s website if your hard drive didn’t come with one).

Another jumper setting, which you can use if you have an 80-conductor ribbon cable, is Cable Select. 80-conductor cables can be identified by their much finer wires compared to 40-conductor cables and by their connector colors (the motherboard end will be blue, red, or green, and the drive connectors will be black for the one on the end and gray for the one on the middle). With both drives set to Cable Select, the computer will recognize the drive hooked up to the black end connector as the master and the one hooked up to the middle gray connector as the slave.

Setting Jumpers: SATA Drives

Good news! There are no jumpers to worry about on SATA drives. Some SATA drives do have a jumper which controls the speed of the SATA drive itself, but you do not need to worry about anything related to master, slave or cable select.

Physical Installation

Now’s when you actually take off the case and get your hands dirty. Let’s get started:

  1. Turn the computer off, unplug it, and take the case off. At this point, you may want to make some quick sketches of just how everything is in there: Which direction is everything facing? Where and how are the cables connected? For some people, such sketches help to put everything back when you are done.
  2. If you are replacing your old hard drive, remove the cables from the old drive. You will see both a ribbon cable and a small power plug. Do not force them out. The ribbon cable is usually quite easy to remove. Sometimes, though, the power connector can become stuck. Just rock it back and forth (lengthwise along the narrow side of the drive), taking care not to rip the connector off the drive. Then remove the mounting screws that hold the drive to the case frame. Sometimes, you may need to tip the case or get into some strange positions to reach all the screws; other times, the hard drive is mounted in a cage that you’ll be able to take out to get to the other side of the drives. Finally, remove the old drive from the case. Be sure not to bump anything too hard on the way out.
  3. If you are replacing the old drive, slide the new drive in right where the other one came out. If you are adding a second drive, just pick any empty drive bay – one a bit below the current drive might work best, because it will make it easier to route cables. If you are installing a 3.5″ drive into a 5.25″ drive bay, you may need to add rails or a mounting bracket to make it fit. Screw the drive into place, making sure the screws aren’t going in crooked. Don’t force them.
  4. If you need a separate controller card, install it now into any unused motherboard slot. Chances are that you don’t need to worry about this. It is usually only necessary if you want to add more IDE drives than your computer will support with it’s two built-in channels. If you are using SATA, your motherboard likely comes with enough SATA ports. If not, you can extend it using a controller card just the same way as with IDE.
  5. Attach the cables to the hard drive and to the motherboard or controller card if necessary. There are two cables: the ribbon cable (or SATA cable) and the power cable. The ribbon cable goes from the controller to the drive. Most cables are keyed to the connector so they only go in one way; if the cable isn’t going in, try flipping it over. Don’t force it. If you are adding a second drive, simply choose a connector on the same ribbon cable that is not used. Most IDE ribbon cables come with three connectors: one on the end (usually black) and one mid-way (usually gray), then one further away on the other end which connects to the motherboard (usually blue, green, or red). In general, the master drive should use the black connector on the end and the slave should use the gray connector in the middle, but if each drive is set either as master or slave, the position is not as important. On a SATA hard drive, position of the drives on the cable does not matter at all because a SATA cable only accomodates one drive.
  6. Plug the system in and turn it on. It is best to leave the case cover off for now in case you need to fiddle with something or troubleshoot the installation.
  7. If you did not use a controller card, enter the BIOS (usually by pressing the F1, F2, F10, F12, or Delete key when you see the Power-On Self-Test or the manufacturer logo). Check the BIOS to make sure that the drives are all being recognized. If you installed a drive on a connector that was not in use, you may have to set the corresponding drive to “Auto.” If your BIOS has an auto-detect feature, you can use that as well. If you did use a controller card, it will pop up a screen showing the name of the card and any drives it has detected.
  8. If the drives are not being recognized, check that both power and data cables are in tightly (including the motherboard end for the data cables), and that the jumpers are set correctly. If they are all recognized correctly, let’s move to the next section.

Software Installation/Cloning

Now that your new drive is installed, we can move on and get it set up with Windows. If you are replacing your current drive and cloning it to your new drive, you will need to connect both drives. Change any necessary jumpers (see “Setting Jumpers” above) so that both drives as well as a CD drive are recognized. At this stage it is not important to screw in your old drive; you can just rest it somewhere convenient, but don’t leave it hanging in midair. Boot from the Ultimate Boot CD, and select the utility you want to use to clone the drive. Go through the appropriate prompts, making sure to select your older drive as the source and your newer one as the destination (pay careful attention to the hard drive sizes indicated by the cloning program). You don’t want to clone your new drive with nothing on it to your old drive with all your data!

If you are replacing your current drive but not cloning its contents to the new drive, put your Windows CD in the drive and boot from it. You will be prompted during the first part of setup to partition and format your drive; if you are using Windows 2000, XP or Vista, make sure to use the NTFS file system.

If you are simply installing a secondary drive, boot into Windows. In Windows 2000/XP/Vista, your new drive will not appear at all in My Computer until you format it. In Windows 9x/ME, it will appear, but you will need to right-click on the new drive and choose “Format” from the menu. To format the drive in Windows 2000 or XP, right-click on My Computer and go to “Manage”. In the window that comes up, click Disk Management in the left pane. Once it loads, you should see an “Initialize Disk” wizard pop up. Partition and format the disk to your liking, but make sure not to convert it to a dynamic disk, as doing so will provide plenty of annoyances down the road.

Finished!

Congratulations, your new drive is installed!  Now that you have installing your hard drive under your belt, you might be interested in partitioning your hard drive (that means dividing your space so you can separate data).

Next Step?

You’ll need to backup and restore your data to your new hard drive. This is VERY time-consuming usually. PCMech has long been a fan of Acronis True Image. This full-featured backup/restore utility from a trusted company will help you clone your PC and restore it to your new hard drive.

Discover how well Acronis True Image Home 2011 and Windows 7 work together to better protect your PC.

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  • Brian

    Thenson,
    Yes you can put the drive into another computer. Need to make sure the jumpers on the drive are set to ‘slave’. If the hard drive is still OK then it should show up fine.

    If the hard drive is ‘bad’ then it will take some nicer tech guy to perform TRUE data recovery and not just NEW hardware. Have done this many times for hard drives that have a ‘bad spot’ that didn’t allow it to be recognized on boot-up.

  • Bomberboy92

    Wow thanks this tutorial really helped me with my new drive.

  • Janna

    I have a problem! I read your page on installing and cloning my hard drives. Well it sounded so simple but no matter what I do I cannot get the computer to recognize my old drive connected to the slave connecter on the cable. I’ve switched the jumpers, I’ve switched the drives, nothing will work.

  • tommy ellis

    Your instructions must only apply to desktops.
    How about installing a new and different hard drive in a laptop?

  • David

    I must be missing a step.

    I cloned my 90GB IDE onto a 250GB IDE using a bootable HD Cloning CD.

    Everything appears to be ok except:
    1. Setup shows the 250GB drive for device “0″
    2. My computer – “C” drive properties still shows the 90GB

    I am running XP. – Sytem came right up and looks OK

    How do I get “My Computer” to recognize the 250 GB.

  • http://www.derbydigital.com Tyler Thompson

    David,

    When you clone a drive, it copies it exactly as it were before. It does not recognise the difference in size. You need to go into disk management to fix this problem.
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

    Please register on our forums and post a thread here for more specialized help. Thanks! http://forum.pcmech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40

  • Big Ste

    Very helpful, thanks. Saved me a lot of messing around.

    Just the right amount of geekiness in my opinion for what it’s worth! If you don’t know the difference between ide & sata then you need to read up on that before trying to fit a new disk drive or you’ll end up buyiing the wrong one and breaking it trying to make it fit!

    Cheers, keep up the good work.

  • Ravenwolfvoyager

    Great article, I really appreciate the simplicity involved and the easy to follow instructions. I did have just a couple of questions. If I’m replacing my hard drive I understand that in order to clone the hard drive I need to have the new hard drive act as the slave drive which I get, do I need to format the new hard drive after I do this? Also just out of curiosity, if you upgrade your hard drive beyond 120gb and say I had a 60gb prior I read somewhere that you would need to purchase a driver card in order to take full advantage of the entire hard drive capacity beyond the 120gb. Thanks all!

  • Jakey

    I have no experience whatsoever and didnt even know the difference bewteen the cables but you have saved me 50.00 possibly more i know what pc people are like.

    I feel great after installing my new drive and am not formatting it then i will be installing windows.

    woot

    thanks again

    jakey

  • jimmy

    very helpful you guys are legends

  • http://www.geocities.com/kg4rrn Bob

    I have a unique problem installing a new HD. I am literate,
    but not geek (all the way) …
    I have a Dell GX 240 Tower with 1GB ram,and its a 1.2.GHZ pentium 4 system. I did not install the belwo mentioned system…
    I have three HD’s installed currently two 20GB and a 10 GB.
    one of the 20 GB is Primary and the other two are slaves.
    I just bought a ATA 320GBHD. Read the partition posts, and figure I would need to “ghost” the OS, or would a clean install be better and ghost the rest of the programs?
    Then there is the BIOS It says A5. Do I need to change this,to another value?
    emails appreciated

  • CHaz from Moscow

    I have been trying to install a drive and my computer says
    CHange from stand alone to master. I feel really stupid. I have changed the jumpers to master. Two hardrives are Western Digital and one is a Maxtor.

    They all are marked master slave etc.
    I tried to re-set boot priority and drive priority, but I get the same thing. Please help.
    By the way, I grew up in St. Pete and worked in Tampa “Seminole Heights” for a couple of years. Live in Moscow Russia now. NIce to see some floridians.

    Chaz

  • http://www.pcmech.com/article/author/tyler/ Tyler Thompson

    Chaz, please register on our forums for more specialized help. Registration is free and the forums are specifically for tech issues such as yours.

    Thank you and I hope you get your issues resolved!

    Tyler Thompson

    PCMechanic Editor-in-Chief

    tyler@pcmech.com

  • steve scott

    hi i am having trouble installing my new sata harddrive i have pluged it in and wanted to use it as a second harddrive but it is not being reconised i went in to bios but im not sure what im looking for in there. there is power gettingto the drive and the conections are secure. could any one help.

  • Glenn

    Steve – if all is connected then u must format – see above under ‘Software Installation/Cloning’

    I’ve just added a second and had no idea about formating which led me to being here.

  • Kyle

    Well I just wanted to say that i have been struggling with my sata HD for over a week now. I had done everything i could think of. And your little guide here solved my problem.

    I had no idea that “disk management” section existed :D

    Once i found it i initialized the HD and am currently formatting it.

    Thank you very much.
    I really appeciate it :D

  • malcolm

    Hi

    I’ve got a system with a 40gig drive which i want to ghost to a 250gig drive. How do i clone the 40gig drive onto the 250gig without formatting the 250gig. Is there a way that i can create an image of the 40gig and still have my 250 gig unammended?

    malcolm

  • angie

    hey i have been trying to get this to work ok so this is what i am doing i have a shuttle computer and it was having probs so i bought an acer from school i tore the shuttle apart and replaced the acers harddrive with the one from the shuttle i also added in my ram but i got it all to pop up on the screen and i put the operating system disc windows xp home edition in and was trying to install that but i get a few steps in and it keeps saying setup didnt find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. and i cant figure out how to get past this and what is wrong? can some one please help me.

  • Steve

    Hi my problem is that my new replacement HD (my old one had a catastrophic failure) does not seem to be recognised – the sata cable is well planted in both the motherboard and hd and the power is connected – oddly in bios it is not seen, the only drives recognised are my two dvd drives (both ide) – when I use my Windows setup disc in one of these drives it seems to put some drivers info into the machine – the Windows setup then stops and says it cannot go further please press F3 to restart – when this is done the restart post then shows the HD as being present – why is the hd not recognised and then after the partial Windows setup then recognised ? From this point I have once had Windows work sucessfully but when powered down completely the machine reverted to not seeing the hard drive in bios and only the two dvd ide drives are seen in bios – any ideas – or any solutions would be greatly appreciated

    Asus K8V motherboard
    Sata Samsung HD 500gb

  • Kirk

    Joshcore, Thank you for the help with my cable select pondry. I have My Pri Master and DVD burner on IDE0, and I needed to add 2 more HDD from my old computer to pull information off, and use them as more storage. I was trying to set the 2 HDD on IDE1 (Secondary) as Master and slave, and it wouldn’t work. Using cable select worked out great. Thank you!

  • Dyan

    Joshcore, I purchased an external HDD caddy, and am trying to install and format an IDE 2.5″ hard drive (160GB, max partition 40GB) to it. This is my first time to get my hands dirty to install. Would you please kindly walk me thru?. My PC is running on 2000XP with FAT32. Please advise me physical installation, formatting and set partitions to the drive. Your help is greatly appreciated!

    Dyan

  • Dyan

    Joshcore, can you reply me. Thanks!!

    Dyan

  • s

    I am installing a second hard drive (60 GB, to be used for data only) on my 2 year old computer. The computer bios recognizes the two hard drives, but Windows does not see the second hard drive.
    The first hard drive is SATA, the second which came from an older computer is IDE. I have changed the jumpers on the IDE hard drive, but Windows does not see the second HD.

    Any suggestions on how to successfully install the second HD.

    Thanks,

  • Bob

    Fantastic!!! Took me hours of wading through other websites of gobbledygook to get nowhere. Once I found you I was just a few minutes from nirvana! I know just enough to be dangerous to myself and all computers around me. Your page sent me through the steps I needed and “I’m OK now” Thanks guys, I’ll be back!

  • june

    I am so not computer literate,so be easy on me. I have a dell and it was givng me a message that there was no boot drive installed, repeatedly for months. Sometimes it woudl boot up and sometimes it wouldn’t. Would this be my hard drive.

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