Installing Drives

For this tutorial, a Hard-Drive will be installed into a computer.

1) First make sure that you computer is completely unplugged (all devices and especially the mains connection). Also wear an anti-static wristband and connect it to a metal object to ground yourself.

2) Take you Hard-Drive out of it's packaging holding it by the sides making sure not to touch any open circuits.

3) Look at the back of you hard drive to see where the IDE or sata port is for the IDE cable or SATA cable and where the molex slot is. As you can see below the molex power slot is on the left and the SATA port is on the right. Notice that on the SATA port there is a shaped connector to make sure you cannot put the cable on the wrong way around. Notice also on the back of the Hard-Drive there Should be eight pins by themselves but two will have a jumper over them. If this is the first Hard-Drive that you are installing you need to have the jumper set to Master. If this is the second drive that you are putting into your system, it needs to be set to Slave. There should be a diagram explaining these pins on the top of your Hard-Drive.

4) Locate on the motherboard where the primary IDE port or primary SATA port is. The is where you are going to plug the other end of the IDE or SATA cable into.

5) Plug the IDE or SATA cable into the back of the Hard-Drive making sure that the cable is the right way round.

6) Next you need to plug the molex (power plug) into the back of the Hard-Drive. Make sure that you put this in the right way - 99% of the time the yellow wire is on the right when plugging it in as shown below.

7) In the picture below you can see how the Hard-Drive has been plugged into the Motherboard using the same technique as plugging it into the Hard-Drive to make sure that is the right way around. You can also see how the Hard-Drive has been secured in place (within its bracket) and screwed to it to stop any movement.

There you go your Hard-Drive should be installed now!

To install other drives (for example a CD-Drive), follow the same steps as the Hard-Drive and you should be fine!