How to Install A UDMA Hard Drive
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Most people at least slightly familiar with installing hardware are aware of such standard IDE terms as "master" and "slave", but with the advent of UDMA 66 and 100 drives, the rules have changed. This will give a few general rules to follow in the installation of the newer high-end drives.
General Precautions:
1. Never install anything with the computer on! This may sound like common sense, but unfortunately, it's not.
2. With the newer drives, you don't want more than one HDD per cable. A UDMA drive can take up to 90% of the bandwidth of a UDMA cable, and the presence of another read/write device on the same cable will lead to data collisions and corruption.
3. Use a UDMA cable! These cables have 80 wires, a twisted pair per pin, and carry a much stronger signal than a standard IDE cable. UDMA drives will exceed the bandwidth of a standard cable leading to slower performance and data corruption.
Ok, so you've read the instructions that came with the drive, right? Here's some additional info.
1. The configuration you want is as follows:
Primary Master=Boot Drive
Primary Slave=CD-ROM Drive
Secondary Master=Second Hard Drive or CD-RW
Secondary Slave=CD-RW or other IDE device
2. You never want a UDMA drive to be the Slave to another IDE device.
3. The best solution to a BIOS limitation, i.e. your BIOS only recognizing 8.4 GB of a 60GB drive, is an IDE controller card. These cards plug into your PCI slot, and not only allow you to use the full size of the drive without a BIOS overlay, but let you use the full speed of the drive on slower motherboards. In addition to this, they give you two extra IDE channels, allowing you to use a maximum of eight IDE devices.
General Precautions:
1. Never install anything with the computer on! This may sound like common sense, but unfortunately, it's not.
2. With the newer drives, you don't want more than one HDD per cable. A UDMA drive can take up to 90% of the bandwidth of a UDMA cable, and the presence of another read/write device on the same cable will lead to data collisions and corruption.
3. Use a UDMA cable! These cables have 80 wires, a twisted pair per pin, and carry a much stronger signal than a standard IDE cable. UDMA drives will exceed the bandwidth of a standard cable leading to slower performance and data corruption.
Ok, so you've read the instructions that came with the drive, right? Here's some additional info.
1. The configuration you want is as follows:
Primary Master=Boot Drive
Primary Slave=CD-ROM Drive
Secondary Master=Second Hard Drive or CD-RW
Secondary Slave=CD-RW or other IDE device
2. You never want a UDMA drive to be the Slave to another IDE device.
3. The best solution to a BIOS limitation, i.e. your BIOS only recognizing 8.4 GB of a 60GB drive, is an IDE controller card. These cards plug into your PCI slot, and not only allow you to use the full size of the drive without a BIOS overlay, but let you use the full speed of the drive on slower motherboards. In addition to this, they give you two extra IDE channels, allowing you to use a maximum of eight IDE devices.
