Change Drive cables in Dell Dimension 8200

compdmb53

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Mar 23, 2010
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Hello,
The drive cables in this Dell are preset to force you to 'cable select' the drives when you boot up. Can I change this Dell cable for another one so that I can set a Master Drive and a Slave Drive. I need to access data on a second drive from another PC but the Dell does not recognize either hard drive if I have the second one plugged in. If I remove the second one then the system boots up just fine. I don't know how to get the system to recognize the second one. Both drives are the same size and both are Ide (Western Digital) One came in the Dell and the other was out of antoher PC. Will changing the cables help this issue?
 

takenra

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Jan 16, 2009
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If I understand your post correctly, you've got 2 IDE drives that are set to cable select yes? If so, its not the cable that's the problem, but the jumper settings on the drive. You need to set the boot drive jumper to master and the other drive to slave. The info for the jumper settings should be on the drives themselves. Alternatively, just put the drive you want to access in a USB enclosure.

Hope that helps.