Hard drive/PC question

About a year ago, I added an internal hard drive to my PC (I'm a rank amateur, but the instructions were pretty straightforward). The new drive is the E: drive, and it's a slave to the original C: drive.

Can I add another hard drive, and make it a slave to the E: drive? Or is there normally only one set of pins for each drive?

I could be wrong, never bothered to really look anything up, but the IDE cable connecting the C: and :E drives should have another connector to connect another drive, and it would be a slave of the C: drive. If it doesn't have another connector, my guess is that you can buy a new cable with more connectors. Again, I could be wrong. Maybe someone who isn't just pulling this out of their ass can help you a little more, haha.

I hadn't thought of that. IIRC there was in fact a second connector. I'll have to open it up and take a look. Thanks!

Typically each ribbon cable only allows for two drives. If you have the two drives on one cable, then you should have a connection left on your cd-rom cable.

Assuming you don't have one of the newer computers with SATA drives.

You can tell the difference because the SATA connector is small. Most likely you have the type where the connector is 40 pin and about 3 inches wide.

Assuming that, you then have two IDE channels. Each capable of one master and one slave.

Your CD-ROM is probably on the secondary IDE. If you have an addiional CD ROM, DVD-ROM or possibly even ZIP drive then you would have four devices and not be able to add more.

If you only have one drive other than the two hard drives then you could make a new hard drive be the slave on the secondary IDE.

If you are maxed out then your only option would be an external USB (or Firewire) drive.

New hard drives are usually much bigger than the old hard drives.

I would keep the operating system and whatever programs are bothersome to reinstall on your C: drive. Then put all your data (My Documents, etc.) on your E: drive.

Everyone who does these kinds of drive upgrades should have a USB or Firewire External hard drive, simply because it's the easiest way to backup your system.

To upgrade your E: drive simply copy everything onto the external USB/Firewire drive, take out the old E: drive and replace it with your new bigger and better E: drive, and then copy everything back onto the new E: drive.

But to tell the truth, I don't even do that. I have a couple of external drives I can carry with me and plug into whatever computer I happen to be using. Almost everything I do is on external hard drives now.

(Agent Mike is now thinking "Great, now I can't just confiscate his computers, I have to dig through his underwear for USB drives too...")