mikeny

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Im filling out the mail in rebates for Western Digital HD. I never thought I would be saying this but:

Back in my day, when I needed a serial number it was near the label called serial number. Wheres the serial number on the HD, is it labeled s/n or MDL? Im guessing s/n is serial number but I want to be sure before I install HD's.

One final question: Do I have to set any jumpers on the HD's. I have 2 hard drives, the first one will have all my drivers and windows on it, the second will have all my games. Thank you......
 

phreejak

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yes, s/n is serial number.

You didn't mention whether or not your HDDs were sata or IDE. If they are IDE then you'll need to set the jumpers, one for master and one for slave, if they are daisychained on one cable (I'd make the boot drive the "master" in this case). Also, it would have been helpful if you would have listed how many optical drives (CD, DVD) you have and whether they were IDE or SATA. In either case, if you have two IDE devices on one cable one has to be master and the other, slave.
 

mikeny

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Sorry, I thought I did, I was in a rush.

I only have one DVD drive...Lightscribe x16 Dual Layered DVD-RW-R (IDE)

I have a floppy drive (IDE)

2 Hard drives...SATA II 3gb/s 16mb cache 250GB
One will ony have windows and all drivers, the other all my games)
Maybe if I get a MMORPG I'll put it on the 1st drive.

My mobo is the Gigabyte 965p-DS3
It has a seperate FDD socket

Came packed with 2 ide cabels (different colors) and 4 SATA cables. Does this help?
 
SATA HDD don't have jumpers.

Actually some do, usually to select between 1.5Gb and 3.0Gb if I remember correctly.

You're right fred, some SATA2 hard drive have jumpers. The ones that don't will auto detect the interface speed supported by the board and adjust their settings accordingly.
 

phreejak

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Regardless of whether or not the jumpers are use to distinguish between the 1.5 or 3.0 gb/s, the sata drives aren't fast enough to use the full extent of the bandwidth - even the new raptors don't use the full extent of the sata 1.0 spec.

You'll just be using the IDE cable on the Optical drive and the floppy drive has its own port.
 

phreejak

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I'm not sure what you are getting at - he doesn't have an IDE HDD, just sata. I know the throughput is higher for sata than IDE but it doesn't have anything to do with his situation.
 

mikeny

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On the back of the HD's there is a spot where jumpers go but there was no plastic thingy to set the jumper.

Also, how do I set sata 0 and sata 1. I was wondering how the system will know where to boot (where windows xp will be).
 

mikeny

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I bought OEM's but got a technical question. I went to install the HD's and in the 3.5 slot and only 2 of the 4 holes match my case. Both holes in the front match. If I move it to get the back then the back 2 not the front 2 match. When system is on, I dont want it to be vibrating like a "use your imigination". Is there a way to get all the holes to match the cases holes. Instructions online says its better to have all four screws in but I can only get the front 2 in.
 

mikeny

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I know it sticks out but what Im saying is that your suppose to install it using 4 screws, In my case, its only 2....what can I do because it will probaby vibrate like heck or worse off get damaged somehow.
 

pat

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I know it sticks out but what Im saying is that your suppose to install it using 4 screws, In my case, its only 2....what can I do because it will probaby vibrate like heck or worse off get damaged somehow.

That's a good one.. maybe there is "another" side on your case, so you could remove it to install the extra 2 screw?
 

mikeny

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I got it installed in case. Thanx guys for your input. Basically I needed to ever so slightly move the hard drive and even though the holes didnt line up I was able to get a scew in opposite holes and it is tightly in.

My mobo also has SATAII0 SATAII 1, SataII 2, and SATAII 3. So I put the SATAII drive that will have all the o/s drives, windows xp, and drivers in the SATA port labeled SATAII 0 and the other in SATAII 1. Correct?

To make sure I dont damage the mobo and allow smooth posting.....The orange sata wire goes into HDD and into the SATAII mobo socket. are the sata cables keyed or it doesnt matter which way they go in? Since my PSU has SATA power cables, I attach the PSU SATA cable to HDD and thats it?
 

Codesmith

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Internal SATA connectors are L shaped so you cannot insert them wrong without breaking them.

You set the boot order in the BIOS setup to chose which drive to boot from.

Some SATA controllers will require you to press F6 during windows
installation to load the proper drivers from a floppy. Check your manual.

--

I don't recommend installing some software to one partition and other software (such as games) to another. There are better ways to backup your saved game files in case Windows needs reinstalled.

I do recommend keeping your software and your personal files on separate partitions.

You can move you Desktop and My Document Folders anywhere you like and if you use Firefox/Thunderbird you can move your email and Internet profiles as well.

Then you can backup and restore your software without overwriting important documents.

If you don't backup your OS, start doing so immediately. Life is to short to waste a day reinstalling software when you could have spend 15 minutes restoring from a backup image.