Coold...

Work...

Hard Drive

Often you buy a new computer and are at a loss for how to get youre old files from it to youre shiney new computer. Here is one of the most simple ways of doing it.

This is your hard drive, Yours will look a little different but the same basic lay out.

From left to right you have your ribon connector, ( notice that the ribon connector can only go on one way because of the notch on the top and the corisponding nib on the cable)

Next we have the jumpers, more on that later...

and finaly the power connection. It can only go in one way.... unless you use a hammer...


Youre hard drive might be attached to your computer by screws on the bottom that corispond the the 4 holes on this picture...


But more than likely your hard drive will be attached with four screws in the six holes in the side, as shown here...

Now here is where the fun comes in... The jumpers... The jumpers set the drive to one of 5 states.

1) Primary Master
2) Primary Slave
3) Secondary Master
4) Secondary Slave
and my favorite
5) CS or Cable Select.


notice that this HD's lable is sort of lacking info on jumpers? it is from a Mac, Macs are a bit fussy when it comes to hardware.

These jumpers just tell the hard drive which plug in the computer is talking to it and tell the computer what state the drive is in... The ribon cable has two connectors on it the last one is master the middle one is slave... Your computer will normaly have two connectors for these cables, one is primary and one is secondary. Refer to your computers documents or the internet with your computer mother board model number.

Here is why I like CS or Cable Select, it lets the computer figure out what it wants to do with the hard drive, Heck the thing is pretty dumb but it can do this with ease... So attach the second hard drive to a secondary position on a cable and not the primary master, set the jumpers to CS and reboot.

You now have access to all the files on the old computer.

Happy computing.

Want to live near the waterfront?

Mojo Mark