Need urgent help, fast please!

[(F)ragnarok(F)]

ive mentioned that i was gonna get a hard drive a few weeks ago here,but now ive got the money but im only getting an 80 gig hard drive instead of the 100 gig one n i need it fast! cuz im running out on virtual memory! i have in mind the maxtor 80GB 7200RPM but im not sure if my system supports this new drive which im gonna get, n my old hard drive. cuz when i got my computer, the hard drive from the previous computer was installed on the computer but the system doesnt run under that cuz the guy said the old drive was probably too old. n also, since im gonna be using 2 hard drives at the same time, im gonna have to make one master n the other one slave, how do u do that? i looked in the back of my old broken cd rom n it has a cs, sl, ma there. sl probaly means slave n ma is master but whats cs? multiple thanx in advance!

[Ali]

Your system is not that old, I guess it would support your new HD, also if it doesn't then goto the website of your mobo manufacturer or HD manufacturer, and download the BIOS patch tool, which enable U to attach bigger volume HDs. By the way how much this new maxtor 80GB costs, I was thinking of getting one myself.

Ali

[Phoenix]

yes ma is master, and sl is slave as you said. CS stands for cable select and the way the hds are connected is the way the are recognized as master drive or slave, both of the drives have to be in cs though, how does this do that? well the master is recognized as a master because it is connected at the end of the IDE cable and a slave is connected at the middle of it. The thing is that if your new drive support faster data protocols and you mobo doesn't, you can connect it an it'll work, but you won't get the max read/write data speeds that the hd can reach.

[(F)ragnarok(F)]

Your system is not that old, I guess it would support your new HD, also if it doesn't then goto the website of your mobo manufacturer or HD manufacturer, and download the BIOS patch tool, which enable U to attach bigger volume HDs. By the way how much this new maxtor 80GB costs, I was thinking of getting one myself.

it costs 185 canadian$ plus tax n r u sure i have to dl the bios patch cuz i think thats gonna be alota work patching it n stuff like that

yes ma is master, and sl is slave as you said. CS stands for cable select and the way the hds are connected is the way the are recognized as master drive or slave, both of the drives have to be in cs though, how does this do that? well the master is recognized as a master because it is connected at the end of the IDE cable and a slave is connected at the middle of it. The thing is that if your new drive support faster data protocols and you mobo doesn't, you can connect it an it'll work, but you won't get the max read/write data speeds that the hd can reach.

when i bought my burner, i did connect the ide cable like that but it still didnt work cuz of the master n slave $h1t, so i had to bring my comp to the store to getting working. what do u mean by the hard drive wont read/write data speeds that the hard drive can reach? does it mean that it wont read 80 gigs n read it as like 40 or 20 gigs?

[Phoenix]

no, If you new HD size is 80GB it'll be read as a 80GB HD don't worry.
I meant if your mobo doesn't support, for example, Ultra ATA/133 and your new HD, for example, supports Ultra ATA/133 and your mobo just support Ultra ATA/100; your Ultra ATA/133 hard drive will work as if it were Ultra ATA/100 because of your mobo IDE capabilities.

Check your mobo manual to find out which IDE protocols supports.

Nothing to do with the master/slave config, but for Ultra ATA/100/133 you need a 80 conductors 40 contacts IDE cable IIRC.

[cooliscool]

I've got a maxtor 40gb ATA 100 and a WD caviar 8.4gb ATA66 in my super7 mobo and it works fine, also, ata 100 is damn fast as it is.

[(F)ragnarok(F)]

whats ide protocols, ata100? please bare with me here

[cooliscool]

ATA is the amount of data the hardrive will fetch in a second. ATA 33=33MB/s, ATA66=66MB/s,ATA100=100MB/s, ATA133=133MB/s. As you can easily tell, ata100 is pretty high end for IDE.