Let's try this again: First!!!

That was unhelpful.

Frank,
What you have there is Serial ATA for the hard drives, with Parallel ATA used for the DVDs. It appears your motherboard only has one parallel ATA channel, so without removing one of your drives, getting a PCI Parallel ATA card to add in, or an adaptor to plug on to the drive, you are screwed.
Refer http://compreviews.about.com/od/storage/l/aaSerialATA.htm for overview and http://www.coolerexpress.com/iwparatatose.html for adaptor info. Best bet would be to give the 120 to SarahK, and buy yourself a new 200.

Seza in the real Melbourne, Australia

Just call Dell, and ask them. I'm sure you paid an arm and a leg for their computer, so I think they they owe it to you to explain how to install another hard drive to compliment the wimpy 80 gigs they sold you previously. PS. I hardly see any specific commie bashing around here... Is the Hate-Filled Lefty(TM) representative of all those left of the middle?

Unfortunately, me, being the Computer-Illiterate Guy, not only could not help Frank find a solution, but do not even understand the problem.

Sorry, Frank. I shall try much harder next time.

Whatever you do, don't cut the blue wire. It could be a bomb set there by the Ninjas.

1)Set your Dell on fire.
2)Film yourself doing a "happy dance."
3)Go buy an IBM with an extra ATA card.
4)HAve a nice day.

The blue cable could be an ethernet cord....

What you want is a USB2 IDE caddy. You can get them all over the web. Belkin have a good one here
It's a little pricey but it's worth it. Hope this helps!

GeekGH has a good point that I didn't think of. If you put the drive in an external enclosure, you can use it quite well for most purposes, and remove it from the computer when you need to have an offsite backup of your pr0n - I mean data! or you need to take it somewhere else.

Seza in the real Melbourne, Australia

Whatever you do don't cut the red wire or is it the green wire .... d@mn ....

You can get adapters that plug IDE drives into serial ATA interfaces. They run about $20. Go search "SATA IDE" on www.pricewatch.com.

Cables, schmables.

This is sooo easy, Frank.

Osmosize the data from the 120 onto the 80. Simple!

Just open it up, and caaaaarefully pour all the bits and bytes onto the 80, it should suck them right up. And all that extra space that's clogging up the 120, and making it look full, will just evaporate, so it should fit just fine.

How do you open the 120? Silly. Use a hammer!

Be sure to let us know how it turned out.

I don't know, Wind Rider. The 80 might overflow. Frank, make sure you have some paper towels handy first.

Let me summerize... You have an SATA primary drive channel and a normal IDE secondary channel for your optical drives. In order to install your IDE drive and still allow proper performance of your drive, go to any CompUSA/BestBuy/Whatever is in your area and pick up an IDE controller (I'd recommend an adaptec ATA1200A:

Adaptec link here if your drive is an ATA100. If it's an ATA/133 then the Promise Ultra controllers aren't bad either and quite cheap and available. The Adaptec rolls in at around $75 and the Promise about $40.

This will allow you to plug in your 120GB HD without putting it in place of one of your optical drives (Your HD will only be as fast as the slowest device on that channel, and optical drives have a lower data throughput than HDs). Write me if you have any questions.

Bryan's advice is good - you do appear to have Serial ATA for your hard drives. If you want to have a portable external, you can go the USB2 "sled" route, but Firewire (IEEE 1394) is better optimized for disk transfers. There are some dual USB2/FW cases for IDE drives from macsales.com and a lot of others; I've used theirs successfully.

On the other hand, once you've transferred the data, a second SATA drive would be nice.

Thank you "Mr. Bubble." Barely understanding the technicalities of the conversation my instinct tells me that Mr. B. has cut right to the chase.

OT, quite often too;

http://instalawyer.blogspot.com/

Monday, November 29, 2004

[...]Well Task Force 2-7 Cav made it back from Fallujah earlier than expected, mission accomplished. It feels so good to be back from a second successful mission that was as difficult as it was dangerous. We left Camp Cooke on Nov 1 and staged at Camp Fallujah for about a week. While there, we got the good news that George Bush was re-elected and we had busy days and nights of planning and rehearsals for the big attack. 2 days before "D Day," a 122 mm rocket impacted 50 meters away from our tents that sent everyone to the floor. We staged there at a remote part of the post and it was obvious that a local national tipped off the "mujahadin" (Arabic name for the enemy) where we staged. From that attack, we lost one soldier and 4 more were wounded. That attack gave the rest of the Task Force enough anger to last the whole fight. After all the drills and rehearsals, the day for the attack finally came on Nov 8. Prime Minister Allawi gave the green light and Coalition and Iraqi forces went all the way.[...]

OT

http://instapundit.com/archives/019440.php

HELPING THE TROOPS: Reader Ron Ford sends this very comprehensive list of support-the-troops websites...

Crap, I missed all the good posts.

Personaly I would go with the ide 133 ad on card. Keep the 80 as your main as it will run (spin) much faster than your 120 (you did get the seagate with the 8 meg cash right? not the god for saken WD wich will die before I finish this post). The external usb/fire wire is a good idea, but I have had problems in the lab with the drive spining up.

Have ya thought about giving up the dang Dell and getting a Mac? More secure, sure as heck easier to use, and much, much cooler than any windoze machine?

1. There is no blue cable. 2. No.

You've got me gob-smackingly confused. Thanks a lot.

this sounds like a two hour call to the help desk.

that sucks

Two words:
Wire nuts

80 Gb to 120 Gb,and DVD,IDE,cables,connections,ports...wha'?

Now I know why I shoulda stayed in college. :(

SATA rocks. Way faster. Solution - buy a 300GB SATA drive.

I assume you own a gun? So just shot the darn thing!

Leighsah, since he already has the x86 hardware, he'd probably be better off with Linux or *BSD. There are several Linux distros that are quite noob-friendly, and FreeBSD isn't too intimidating, either.

Those SATA-to-IDE adapters cards for IDE drives like the one you have work fine. I used one for more than a year in my lasty machine. You are out 20 or 30 bucks though.

Do you have a RAID controller on your board? What system is it?

Could his IDE controller not be a master/slave configuration - as is common - but with a cable with only one "other" end? Perhaps a new IDE cable with both connectors would solve the problem?

Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=12-181-064&depa=0
might work just fine.

Then there's only that darn master/slave thing with the jumpers... ;)

Ok, nevermind. Maybe I should make sure I read the post right in the first place. haha

I agree... get an external usb or firewire box for it, transfer the data, get another internal sata drive (waaay fast), and keep the usb box/80gb for back-up purposes. That's what I would do anyway....

HA HA HA HA HA.

Oh sorry. This is a humorous blog, right?

I thought men could fix ANYTHING with duct tape. Is the man cure-all not even being considered? This is very disappointing Frank. G'luck with all that techie bs. My Dell came with color codes and a free roll of duct tape. Yay!

Dude !
You're gettin' screwed by a Dell !

Quote: "Leighsah, since he already has the x86 hardware, he'd probably be better off with Linux or *BSD. There are several Linux distros that are quite noob-friendly, and FreeBSD isn't too intimidating, either." Spetiam

Yeah but it's a bitch to get Xf86 working with FBSD if you have anything but a crappy old system. Better off with a real Noob distro like cobind or NLD nice simple graphic installer, GNOME based desktop etc.

mandrake seems like it's newbie friendly...

Good luck with that

If you really, really want to use that 120 GB drive in your computer, just pull out the DVD drive (you probably want to keep the DVD burner), make sure the jumper setting on the hard drive matches that of the DVD drive you removed, and install it in an extra 3.5" drive bay. Hopefully, Dell included a spare blank front panel, or you'll have a big empty space in the front of your PC.

Two DVD drives is kind of pointless, unless you're doing a lot of...uh..."DVD backups."

Anyway, once that's done, close the case, reconnect the power, and ship the unused DVD drive to "Guncrazy, 320 Audubon Boulevard, Apartment 329..."

Best solution that spends a couple of bucks but leaves you in a flexible position:

Assumption 1 - you have the covers for the two DVD bays.

Assumption 2 - you have either firewire (best) or USB2 ports

Remove BOTH DVD drives and put them in an external dual Firwire (or USB) CD/DVD case. Advantage is that the computer case can be tucked away under the desk with only the CD/DVD case cluttering the top.

Cost - one dual CD/DVD case and one Firewire or USB2 connector and two drive bay covers.

A touch more expensive (maybe) than buying a PCI ATA adaptor, but you now have the capability of putting the 120 in one of the DVD bays, and an extra full size internal bay for the future to add another ATA or SATA drive (or ATA ZIP if you need one).

Good Grief:

Frank -- 7 rds .45 Federal HydraShok should do it

You, hear get an external, or get an adapter alot. But what about your old machine? What kind of network do you have. If I were you I would wipe it clean and set it up as a network fileserver. Put debian on it(only if you have broadband) and use a program called samba to set up the partitions as SMB shares. That way you get the 120, along with the primary drive as storage. Also give us all shells on your linux box.

GeekGH, actually, the latest production release of FreeBSD (5.3) works like a charm on my machine (Athlon XP 2100), and they're not using XFree86 anymore, but X.org. There's even a FreeBSD LiveCD that's worked great in every machine I've tried.

I'm not familiar with cobind or NLD, but I see NLD is based on SuSE. The more recent versions of SuSE seem to be noob-friendly, however... SuSE and NLD aren't free and when I tried SuSE 9.1, I had to do a fair amount of configuration file editing, despite YaST.

The easiest distro I've tried to date has been what I'm using now, Ubuntu. Yeah, weird name, but it works wonderfully well. Among the noob-friendly features:
1. No configuration file editing, everything already works.
2. It has the easiest-to-use package manager I've seen so far (Synaptic).
3. They'll send you free factory CDs, both a LiveCD and installation CD, and they'll send you a bunch if you request them.
4. OpenOffice.org, Firefox, The Gimp and Gaim are installed by default.

Incidentally, Ubuntu will be moving from XFree86 to X.org with its next release.

I can remember thinking that the 4 GB hard drive that came with my 200 MHz Pentium Pro was all I would ever need. Right!

P.S. You should've bought a Mac.

A Mac? Are you people on crack? I like to play computer games. Do you Mac users know what those are?

All I'm asking is if I can buy an adaptor to make this hard drive work on my new computer. You people are freaks.

Insulting your readers is probably not the best way to get advice...or win the Weblog award. Everybody vote for Scrappleface, y'all.

First no Happy Dance, now he calls us "crack-smoking dumbasses" and "freaks". I'm off to vote for Scrappleface! Ta-ta!!

Yes, the serial ATA converter should solve your problem. Give or take the usual incompatibility problems that sometimes pop up.

For instance, the note on the Addonics page "ATAPI device may only work with host controller using Silicon Image chipset". If I read that correctly, you don't need to worry about that little note, because your ATA hard drive is not an ATAPI device (but the DVD drives are). Who knows what other gotchas lie in wait.

Good luck.

Everyone look at Bob. That's what's called a useful comment. He get's a star.

Ah, I just kid you all because I love.

I don't so hardware, I do software. I'm sure I can write an assembler subroutine that will fix your problem.

Dave,
If you did that, I would fear you as an evil sorcerer.

Floppies. Lots of floppies.

What?

Speaking of computer games, if you like HALO, you've gotta see this.

http://www.heavy.com/index.php?channel=dungeonMajesty2&partner=aff2

Then click on Red and Blue, about the fifth icon from the bottom left.

Well gee whiz, Frank, I've been having my own computer woes. http://ignatz.brinkster.net/writing/foxymama.html
But I could "loan" you my dear husband for a nanosecond or two. He's a pretty good computer figurer-outer... ~;^)

Frank lets play Day of Defeat!!

just pick the server....

Ha. Sorry, Frank, it's just that others had already answered your question to my satisfaction. :)

Anyhow, to restate what's already been said... Personally, I'd get an IDE to SATA adapter. You might try try looking at your hardware profile or invoice to figure out exactly what type of ATA you have. The thing you link to in your second update will probably work.

Whatever you end up doing, bear in mind that the SATA drive will offer better performance (i.e., just use the IDE drive for backup, storage, etc., and use the SATA drive to run your OS, programs and ~games~).

There are usually 2 IDE slots right next to eachother on the Motherboard.

You may have to get an IDE cord and plug the HD into the master port. Make sure your jumper is set for master also, otherwise the computer will be hella confused.

And to people saying "Get a mac", why the f*** would he want a computer that can't be upgraded? Get a life you computer tards.

MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....."readers smoking crack?" mighty powerful words coming from a man who bought a new computer with a smaller hard drive than his previous computer

The SATA adapter like you listed should work fine, as others have said. You can find other designs that are a little more compact and look less like a circuit board plugged onto the back of your drive. Those are the kind I personally favor.

Thanks for the "apology". :P

First:

Of course use the IDE->SATA connector! And you should be fine using it as the primary drive, so long as the adapter you get isn't....crap! Get a good adapter (Highpoint Rockethead looks nice - $25 CAN).

Second, unless that SATA drive is a 10k RPM SCSI wannabe, the IDE drive will be as fast or faster. Now, it's a DELL, so it's NOT a 10k drive. And the burst rate on even a top-of-the-line 7,200 rpm drive doesn't exceed the 100MB/S boundary. Doesn't even pass 85MB/S, if I remember right. Let's not get into native command-queuing (doesn't exist on the 80GB model).

And most SATA drives use internal IDE(drive)->SATA(controller) adapters, to boot. You're not missing anything by using the old drive (the Mitsubishi drives that use an internal adapter actually outperform the Seagates that don't).

No wonder Frank J. is wondering where he finds his readers? In 59 comments, something like 4 or 5 people actually know what they're talking about (with some pre-conceptions based on misleading marketing). Wonder if he'll ever ask another tech question on here? Probably not. Ungrateful ingrates (double positive makes a super-positive)! Who brings the funny here anyway?

If any of you want anymore info on SATA drives, go to tom's hardware and browse through the section on hard drives.

Frank. I had the same problem nearly a year ago. SATAs were sort of new and I was unaware of the adapter option. So I bought an external USB 2.0 drive. Works great...BUT, if you decide to go with the external option (now or in the future), be sure it is formatted to NTFS and NOT FAT32! I had compiled some DVD images but could NOT transfer them to my external drive because FAT32 has a 4GB limit.

BTW, some engineer you are;-) Isn't this one of them scientifical problems that you enjoy solving?

Ok, I won't post anymore. I mistakenly thought humor was appreciated here. My bat, my bruvah.

Frank, if you use Cedega you can play Windows games in Linux (and run photoshop/word/etc).

Alot of applications and games can be got running just fine in regular old wine.

Neverwinter Nights actually runs faster using Cedega on Linux than it does running natively on Windows.

P.S.

What's wrong with crack?

Yeah, Sack o' Cat is right.Crack is good. Gob-smackingly delicious.

Frank, ignore the crack-heads. The device you linked to is what you need. I have two of those adapters in my Windows XP machine that hook up two old 120 GB drives to the SATA controller. Be sure you have all the cables you'll need: (1) a SATA data cable, (2) a SATA power cable, (3) an IDE data cable and (4) an IDE power cable.

The adapter is the best solution. Both an external drive or network storage are also good solutions. But the question is are you only gonna use the space for games or do you use media(large video files. Do you transfer information back and forth from work?

Hehe, what you need is a hardware RAID 0+1 card that allows you to put two SATA drives together for TWICE THE POWER

also that would be very very very expensive

i think its time to take of the training wheels off and start building you're own computers ;)

to be fair frank.. not all are crack heads.. some are just sniffing glue

Funniest "Update" EVAH....ROTFLMAO!

Hey I was reading threw the comments and some one said NWN WOOT. btw hl2 PWNS halo. Frank what are you system specks, I am just dieing to know what dell is unloading on people these days. Me? I have a 2ghz x 2 (4ghz total) with 2 gigs of 800mhz rambus and a extended agp that plays hl2 very nicely thanks for asking.

And people please Fadora 2 is way more noob friendly than BSD, I don't even know why you folks suggest it.

Hey Monster, have you tried out Fc3 yet?

paul, i don't read IMAO just to wait for
Frank J to ask me a tech question. good thing for him, 'cause i dont know that much about the internal parts of my computer, let alone his. i read because he's funny, and i'm grateful for that! glad someone that can help him read this post.
btw... i live in the sticks, and we don't get all that new-fangled city stuff like crack up here. we got weed and bathtub crank, that's about it.

Frank is winning the weblog award by .5%

Must be the crack.

no, not crack. i think he's doing "the cream" and "the clear" from LMAO-CO.

sorry for that last comment, Frank J. you don't need funniness-enhancing substances to make your loyal non crack-smoking fans laugh their asses off.

yes us mac owners play games. We just do it on game platforms like x-box and the like. See they are made for games and as such excel at them and they are about ten times cheaper.

BTW LOVE YOUR SITE!!!!!

Frank first off I refuse to smoke anything named after a part of my ass. Bad for my image.

Now then I refuse to help until promised happy dance is delievered.

hey frank, my son just brought home a game called "time spliters 2" where you get to kill monkeys with flame throwers and stuff (unless they kill you first!). reminded me of you.

Maybe Dell's easy-to-open case is just a tease. It's really easy to open, but of course they don't intend for anyone to work on their own computer; they want you to send it back. They let you open it so you can see that there *should* be a way to do it, but of course they don't tell you that way.

The real solution is Totally Awesome Computers.

Doing EQ2 Frank??

I'm sorry.. What was that? I was smoking crack and wasn't paying attention.

moehawk, anyone else that thought I mis-stepped:

I make my money off of helpin' folks with their computer troubles. And I spend too much damned time setting those same folks straight after people who don't know what they're talkin' about get through with 'em. So it's a pet peave when I see someone stickin' their nose(s) in without knowing what or how, especially since I know how much anxiety a person can feel when they're trying to figure out whether to go with my advice or that of someone who they think they should trust more because that person once managed to install a pnp network card in only six hours and talks L33T 5P34K.

And clews:

You're thinking FAT16 when you say 4 gig limit. But NTFS is better, since and I SAY SO!

Silly me, that should have read:

"since (insert babble here) and I SAY SO!"

Anyway, anyone here play City of Heroes?

So YOU'RE that slow kid named "SkinnyArmFrank" who I own over and over every time I play Call of Duty!

El Diablo Con Queso will devour your soul! With cheese.

So YOU'RE that slow kid named "SkinnyArmFrank" who I own over and over every time I play Call of Duty!

El Diablo Con Queso will devour your soul! With cheese.

Before you spend a lot of money on a RAID controller, put a roach motel inside overnight.

"polltroll" has dicovered my "true" identity. CRAP!!!

Monster, I stopped seriously paying attention to RedHat/Fedora when they started releasing three disks for installation. Also, last I checked, RPMs and the RedHat/Fedora package manager appeared to replicate DLL hell. My experience with RedHat/Fedora, overall, has been rather unpleasant. For newbies, I'd recommend Ubuntu. See my previous post for some reasons why.

Eh, the extry Fadora cds, are just annoying, you only need the first one. They do that to make it to big to download and make you buy the cds. If you want to get uber silly I have a sweet release of a modded version of Dos 7.10 useing the special MS word package you make a pretty....er system.... to ...... um...... stare at, and play old dos games.

Best response to the crazy Linux/Mac addicts ever - two thumbs up.

Jeez oh man, such animosity and condescension. Alsadius, you're more than welcome to buy Windows XP as gift for me. :) My Windows 95 has long ago outlived its usefulness...

Incidentally, I've never owned a Mac and probably never will, for precisely the same reason I don't own Windows XP. It costs more than I'm willing to spend on an easily substituted piece of software. So I use a free OS. Yeah, I know, it's crazy. Maybe I should just shell out the ~$150 for XP.

no, not crazy, just stubborn. i've been messing around with Linux for a couple of months now, and it does all the basic stuff most people use a computer for...surfing the web, email, etc. not so good for new computer games or running newer software that doesn't have a Linux version however... but i have a feeling that things might change sooner than later, so knowing how Linux works is a plus in my book.

Someone let a pervert out of its cage...