Drive Connectors Old to new?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kathy L
  • Start date Start date
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Kathy L

I have a one year old Dell 5100 with a Maxtor 6L080M0 hard drive. I
want to add my older Maxtor D740X-6L drive as second drive.

The problem is the connectors. The older one does not use the same
connectors as the newer one. It looks like the connectors where a A
drive would go would work with the old drive, but would I be able to
acess the info on the drive? Or is the a convertor I could use to add
my old drive?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Previously Kathy L said:
I have a one year old Dell 5100 with a Maxtor 6L080M0 hard drive. I
want to add my older Maxtor D740X-6L drive as second drive.
Click to expand...
The problem is the connectors. The older one does not use the same
connectors as the newer one. It looks like the connectors where a A
drive would go would work with the old drive, but would I be able to
acess the info on the drive? Or is the a convertor I could use to add
my old drive?
Click to expand...
Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Thanks!
Click to expand...

It seems the 6L080M0 is an SATA drive, while the D740X-6L
is ATA. You could use a converter, but it would not really help,
since you can get an ordinary ATA cable and connect the older drive
with it. The only possible problem I see is that you have
to make sure the system boots from the newer drive with the OS on
it. Advice: Just connect the older drive and see whether it
works. If not, go into the system BIOS and select the newer
drive as boot drive.

Arno
 
I understand about the master and slave concept. I just want to know
how to hook up my older drive. I have ATA ribbon cable from the old
computer. But where is the power supply coming from in my new computer
and where do I put the ribbon?

Thanks.
Kathy L
 
Kathy L said:
I understand about the master and slave concept. I just want to know
how to hook up my older drive. I have ATA ribbon cable from the old
computer. But where is the power supply coming from in my new computer
and where do I put the ribbon?
Click to expand...

You should be able to connect the older drive on the same ribbon cable as
the optical drive and do the power the same way its done on the optical drive.
 
Previously Kathy L said:
I understand about the master and slave concept.
Ok.

I just want to know
how to hook up my older drive. I have ATA ribbon cable from the old
computer.
Click to expand...

Fine, use that.
But where is the power supply coming from in my new computer
and where do I put the ribbon?
Click to expand...

You should have some traditional style molex connectors in the new
computer that will fit the old drive. These are typically white, 5mm x
20mm anf have 4 wires running to them, traditionally
red-black-black-yellow. The traditional molex connector is still used
for CDROMs and such. If none is free, you can split one that is in use
with a "Y" cable for 5 USD/EUR or so.

The ribbon cable has a mainboard side. That goes into the mainboard
ATA/IDE connector. If you don't have one, then you need to get an ATA
controller, e.g. a Promise Ultra 100tx2 (or 133 tx2) and plug it in
there. (the controller goes into a PCI slot.) The other end goes into
the disk. If you jumper the disk to ''master'' instead of ''cable select''
(instructions on drive label) you can use either of the two disk
connectors.

One more thing: Maxtor drives need to be cooled well in order
to be reliable. If you don't have good airflow where you want
to mount the drive, then get a HDD cooler for it as well.

Arno
 
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