[chimpyboy]

Ok, I guess I'm a complete dumbass. I'm trying to replace my hard drive, and thought I had a good deal on my hands ordering this one:
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822148236

I'm trying to put it inside a Dell Dimension 8400.

The problem I had when buying it is that I'm no expert on deciphering the hard drive specs. I thought it would be enough to match up the speed, cache, etc. I thought I had an SATA system, and that I was ordering a SATA drive to match...as I figured that "serial" ATA was the "S" in "SATA".

SO I get this drive delivered, and I find that the connectors look NOTHING alike.

THe old drive has 3 ports, one looks like a jumper port, but with the bottom 1/2 removed (so it's just 4 pins).
The other two are linear ports, one longer than the other, with sideways "L" shapes. (these were the two ports connected to the power and motherboard.

THe new drive is totally different, with what looks like a 40pin, a standard 8 pin jumper, and another port with 4 larger pins.

Can anyone tell me, first of all, what the [bleep] I missed when I was spec-ing out the machine and matching it up to the drive? And second, can I somehow hook this new drive in? (I'm willing to buy some new cables if need be), or can this motherboard even be hooked to this thing?

Thanks

[Advertisements]

Howdy:

If the link you provided was for the drive you ordered, then you got what you orders a plain old IDE harddrive.

I looked through the specs and could not find the "serial" ATA you mentioned.

I did however see IDE Ultra ATA100 which is just an old normal harddrive NOT SATA.

Murray

[Murray S.]

Howdy:

If the link you provided was for the drive you ordered, then you got what you orders a plain old IDE harddrive.

I looked through the specs and could not find the "serial" ATA you mentioned.

I did however see IDE Ultra ATA100 which is just an old normal harddrive NOT SATA.

Murray

[hawklord]

you can connect the drive using a ribbon (ide) cable, one side plugs into your motherboard, the other into the hard drive,
(there is a small raised section on the cable which locates into a cut-out on the hdd, so it can only be fitted correctly one way)

to power the drive, plug one of the white molex power connectors from the power supply into the 'port with 4 larger pins'
(this can only be located one way as well)

all this is assuming that you have primary ide on your motherboard and molex connectors from your power supply

you may need to select your sata drive to be first hdd boot device in your bios

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by hawklord, 28 July 2009 - 02:35 AM.