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Step 7: Installing the hard-drive

First, we need to ensure that the hard drive is set up to be the master drive on its IDE cable. Each IDE cable can support up to two IDE devices, such as hard-drives, CD-drives, Zip Drives, etc., but in order for this to work, one IDE device must be designated as a master device, and one must be designated as a slave device. You cannot have two master devices or two slave devices on a single cable.

Examine the top of your hard-drive. There should be a chart there depicting the necessary jumper settings to make the drive a master or slave device. Otherwise, the chart will be somewhere on the body of the drive. The set of jumpers will be on the back end of the drive.

Ensure that they are set correctly to enable the drive as a master. You may need a set of tweezers to move the jumpers around if you have been biting your fingernails.

Insert the hard drive into the 3.5" drive-tray and screw it in securely on both sides. Note that hard-drives generally use a different sized screw than CD-ROMs and floppy drives for some completely inexplicable reason.