how to attach hard disks?

[menards]

1)do you need to attach the power connector first before attaching the IDE cable?

2)on an IDE cable with 2 connectors, does it matter where I put the master and slave? Or is it all purely determined by the jumper settings?

 

[folken]

1) doesn't matter, just make sure the comp is off
2) master goes at the end, slave goes in the middle

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[Codesmith]

If you set the drive to cable select then it matters. Never use cable select. Some drives have single master, master with slave, and slave jumper positions.

If using one drive on a three connector cable use the end connector. The two connectors that go to the drives are closer together, the far one goes to the motherboard.

 

[khha4113]

Most HD's manufacturers set their modern drives Cable Select as default (Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital) except Hitachi is set as Master single drive, and they don't cause problems. I found that set as CS make thing easier if you have multiple HDs and want to change their settings from master to slave, or vice versa.
To Menards, check your HD's manufacturer for instruction how to do that.

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