Drives

Next install the hard drive and optical drives.Before you install IDE/ATA drives, you will need to set the drives jumpers, so that yourmotherboard knows which drive is which; consult your motherboard/drive's instructions onhow to do this. The jumpers configurations are usually either printed on the back, or on the topof the drive. Drives can be configured in 2 ways: Drive Select or Cable Select. Cable selectautomatically assigns slave/master based on the plug on the IDE cable the drive is plugged into.Put the jumper on CS. In drive select, master/slave is determined by the jumper. In this mode,configure one of the drives the master, and the other slave. If the IDE channel has only onedrive, then make that drive master.Each IDE/ATA channel can handle two drives, a master and a slave. SATA can only handleone drive, so there is no need to adjust jumpers. How a drive is installed will depend on thecase. When using an IDE cable, plug the two connectors that are closer together into the 2drives, and the third to the controller or motherboard. The connector furthest from the boardshould be attached to the Master drive. Make sure the drive that you will install your OS on isprimary master. (Note: IDE connectors are keyed, so it should be impossible to insert thembackwards. However, it doesn't require very much force to do this, and you may destroy yourmotherboard if so. Also look carefully at the drive and the cable connection before you try toconnect them. You will probably see a "missing" pin on the drive, and a corresponding blockedsocket on the connector. If you break a pin on the drive, you will probably have a worthlessdrive. Note: most parallel IDE cables have a colored stripe down one side. That colored stripesignifies "pin 1" - and usually will line up next to the molex power connection on your drive.Use this rule of thumb if your connectors aren't keyed.) Next, plug a 4 pin molex powerconnector into each hard drive and optical drive. If you are installing the power connector to aSATA drive, only install one of the power connectors. Some drives have the option of usingeither the SATA power connector (a flat about 1" wide connector) or the standard molexconnector; use one or the other, not both.If you install a floppy disk drive, the cable is very similar to the IDE cable, but with fewerwires. Floppy drives do not have master/slave. BUT the floppy disk connector is not usuallykeyed, and will go in either way up! One wire in the IDE cable will be coloured differently: thisis pin 1. There is usually some indication on the floppy drive as to which side this is. Thepower plug for a floppy is 4 pins in a line, but rather smaller than a molex one.