Cable for slave?

[qwertyjjj]

It's been a while since I opened a PC box but last time I looked, hard drive cables were about 10 times as wide and grey
So, what is this orange cable inside plugged into the hard drive and how can I et a slave connected?
There don't seem to be any spare cables inside this box to connect a 2nd hard drive:

 

[cl-scott]

You have been out of things for a while. That is a SATA data cable, and there are no master/slave setups with SATA. It's serial, so each drive gets a dedicated connection. You can google SATA or just read up on it on Wikipedia.

 

[qwertyjjj]

You have been out of things for a while. That is a SATA data cable, and there are no master/slave setups with SATA. It's serial, so each drive gets a dedicated connection. You can google SATA or just read up on it on Wikipedia.

What were the old ones?
TBH, I've had laptops for years, first time I've had a PC back in a while and it's a dedicated media box now.

So, basically, I need a SATA cable and a spare power connector and just plug it all in?

 

[bliq]

yup. sata cable and sata power (usually black). of course an open SATA port on the motherboard and a SATA interface hard drive.

btw, your current laptops also have sata hard drives most likely.

 

[cl-scott]

What were the old ones?
TBH, I've had laptops for years, first time I've had a PC back in a while and it's a dedicated media box now.

So, basically, I need a SATA cable and a spare power connector and just plug it all in?

The old one was EIDE/IDE or sometimes known as PATA (Parallel ATA). So as bliq said, you need a free SATA port on the motherboard (one of the benefits of SATA is there's no primary or secondary controllers either), a SATA cable, and a free power connector off the PSU or one of those Y-adapters. Just keep in mind that SATA has a new style power connector as well, and the old IDE molex ones won't work anymore.

Generally the changes are for the best. Much harder to damage the pins on SATA drives, not to mention the fun of the cables moving just a little bit out of alignment on the old molex style and so then it wouldn't go on until you straitened everything out. Plus every drive has a dedicated channel now, so a slave device isn't limited by the master performance wise.