Room for another hard drive?

[Garfield]

How will I know if I have room for another hard drive (internal)? Is there some sort of port that I have to have open to put in another? Thanks...

--Garfield

[cornbread]

The only way to know is to open your case and see. Do you have a extra bay? If so you could install it there with a hd/bay adapter.

[Wa11y]

More than that, do you have open IDE channels? Depending on how many IDE devices you have (HDD, CD/DVD, High-capacity removeable media, etc...) you may or may not have room. Just about every motherboard has two IDE headers that support 2 IDE devices on each, for a total of four IDE devices. If you have an open IDE channel, you can put a new drive in. But it also helps to have an open bay to put it in. Most hard drives are 3.5", but some come with 3.5 to 5.25 adapter rails, so even if you don't have an open 3.5" drive bay, you can use a 5.25" drive bay with the adapter rails.

[Garfield]

Ummm...what exactly should I be looking for? What exactly does a bay port look like (a link to a pic would be great)? What does an IDE look like? Where would I find that? Thanks, guys, I appreciate this!!!

--Garfield

[forgoten]

Ok, i've included a pic below of the inside of my puter 4 ya!

the grey ribbon calbe is your ide cable.... you can only hook as many hard drives as your mobo will allow. The end that it is plugged into is called ide headers, or soemthing, and each of those can have hd's, cdrom's, basically anything but floppy drives. and on eac of those headers, you can put a ribbon calbe or ide cable, and each cable has 2 more connectors on them. so you can put 2 hd's on each cable... but you have to remember to set the one to master and the others to slave.. i've had problems with cable select so steer away from that... but maybe i didn't expalin that well enuf... iduno, check out my wonderfull windows paint skills! ha

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Here's some more info...these bays are 3.5"...you can also use 5 1/4" bays, but you'll need an adapter as your hard drive is only 3.5" wide. Any empty slot is fine to use if it is empty to hold your hard drive.

The IDE Channels are what your hard drives, cd roms, floppy drives, etc. As stated above, you can have up to 2 devices plugged in to each of those channels. (one channel is blue and the other black...the blue one is probably the primary IDE channel) If your ribbon only has one connector, you'll have to buy a new one with 2 connectors on it.

[Garfield]

Thanks, guys! I'll study these and then I'll open her (my comp) up. I'll see what I have and if I have it. Then I'll get back to you. Thanks!!!

--Garfield

[Garfield]

I'll be taking my case off tonight so then I'll tell you if I have room. I'm still a little unsure of what I'm looking at, but your pics will aid my visuals :D

--Garfield

I'm off :burn: (I've always wanted to use that smily, but I never found a use for it :D )