IDE Drive

B

bill of oz

Member
i have a dell E521 with windows vista, trying to install an IDE hard drive as a second (slave) drive,

my motherboard has two ribbon cable connections, one at the top of the board and one at the bottom of the board which are both occupied by the same ribbon cable,

the ribbon cable goes from the top port, then into my 3.5 disk drive, then into the bottom port, beside the bottom port it says "FLOPPY 1"

my question is.....can i connect my IDE hard drive into either of these two ribbon ports?

if i have to remove my 3.5 drive i dont care,
 
Are you sure the cable is connected as you say, from mobo to drive and back to mobo? I don't even see how that could work. Your mobo may have 2 ide channels and the header pins on the mobo should be labeled as ide 1 & ide 2. The pins labeled floppy 1 are for a floppy disk drive and should not connect to an ide hdd.
 
strollin said:
Are you sure the cable is connected as you say, from mobo to drive and back to mobo? I don't even see how that could work. Your mobo may have 2 ide channels and the header pins on the mobo should be labeled as ide 1 & ide 2. The pins labeled floppy 1 are for a floppy disk drive and should not connect to an ide hdd.
Click to expand...

sorry, my mistake, the cable goes from "FLOPPY 1" directly to the 3.5 drive and stops,

so i can not connect an IDE HD to the "FLOPPY 1" port?

i have a spare sata port on the motherboard, is that where i would connect the IDE drive with some kind of adapter?
 
No, floppy por tis for floppy drives only.

Sata is for Sata drives only.

You need to see if your mobo has 1 or more sets of pins labeled as IDE, then you will need the appropriate cable to connect between mobo and drive. You will also need to properly set the master/slave jumpers on the drive. If no
IDE connectors on mobo then you will need to see about getting a card that supports IDE.
 
strollin said:
No, floppy por tis for floppy drives only.

Sata is for Sata drives only.

You need to see if your mobo has 1 or more sets of pins labeled as IDE, then you will need the appropriate cable to connect between mobo and drive. You will also need to properly set the master/slave jumpers on the drive. If no
IDE connectors on mobo then you will need to see about getting a card that supports IDE.
Click to expand...

thanks,

my motherboard only has two ribbon cable connections,

one marked "FLOPPY 1" going to my 3.5 drive,

the other has no identification markings anywhere, but it has a ribbon cable going to a board at the front of the system with USB ports on the board
 
It sounds like a picture of it would help us the most. IDE drives won't function in a floppy port, but it may be labeled in a way where FLOPPY looks the closest.
 
The ports are not interchangeable. Its not only they wont work, the cables physically will not fit each other.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top