slave drive 1

[meowmix4194]

I'm a noob when it comes to internal computer systems, so I apologize in advance if this is not an appropriate question for this forum, but I could not find another that addressed similar issues.

My question is not necessarily a problem per say, but a "how to?"

I have a duplicate hard drive of the one I currently have in my Sony VGC-RA820G, and I was interested in using it as a secondary slave drive. How would I do that? All I know is that I already have a power source for it. What else is it that I need? I can see that the master has a cable labeled "Serial ATA," and there are slots to connect more to my motherboard. I also notice that there is a white clip over the far right pair of prongs in a 2x4 prong set, the same two are hilighted on the hard drives' label. Do I need either of these to add my duplicate as a slave?

My drive is labeled as follows:

Wester Digital
WD Caviar
Serial ATA Hard Drive
Drive Parameters: LBA 390721968 [Little square thing] 200 GB

Master/Slave jumper not required for SATA.
Jumpered pins 1 and 2 disable SSC
Jumperedpins 3 and 4 enable PM2

Then this diagram:

___________| |______| 7531 | |
---------------| |---------| 8642 |o o o o|
SATA Power Serial Factory Legacy
Data Jumper Power
Settings

(Boxes around numbers, darker on 1&2)

SATA Power is the only connection I have.

Thanks!

 

[Freestone]

First, a star to you. Questions normally don't rate a star but I think yours could be used as a model for all future questions.

In SATA architecture, there are no master or slave devices, so as the label says, you don't need a jumper to differentiate a drive's role. Leave the jumpers on the drive set to factory defaults.

Since you say you have power, the the only thing needed to be added would be a SATA data cable between the drive and motherboard.

I am unfamiliar with Sony systems, so once you have the drive mounted, and the data and power cables installed, you may have to go into BIOS and enable the SATA port. Again, I am not sure this step is necessary. Maybe someone with more knowledge of Sonys will chime in.

If all goes well, then the last steps would be to set up a partition or partitions on the drive, and format them. Since you don't mention an Operating System, I am assuming you are using XP. The partitioning is performed through XP's Disk Management. This is accessed right-clicking My Computer, Manage or by Start, Run..., diskmgmt.msc (These steps are the same for Windows 2000)

 

[meowmix4194]

Thanks a lot for the advice! I will reply back as soon as I get the stuff that I need. Any suggestions as to the best way to get an SATA data cable?

 

[Freestone]

Best way would be to have an extra SATA cable supplied with your system, next would be for a friend to give you one, followed by a local store maybe having one, then finallly finding one online.

 

[meowmix4194]

Okay, problemo. I do have XP, MCE, and when I connected the cable, and turned on my computer, it ran off of the new one, and not the old one. It also seems that Disk Management doesn't recognize my old one as even existing. BIOS wasn't any help either.

 

[meowmix4194]

Never mind! I accidentally unplugged my old one when putting in my new one!

 

[meowmix4194]

Awesome! It worked perfectly! I greatly appreciate the help!

 

[Freestone]

I'm glad to have been of help.