confused hard drive

I have an old gateway.Hard drive shot.Trying to install new hard drive .My ide ribbon has old hard drive plus cd burner attached.How can i install new drive.I was told i can use a3 device floopy ribbon to connect new drive.Stumped !Can i install new drive in place of old one and reinstall op system.Please Advise.Thks Artybabe:cry:cry

 

If the old hard drive is "shot" why don't you just put the new drive in its place?

 

No NO NO.

A new drive will almost certainly have come with a new flat cable (if not get one).

Compare this cable to the one with your old Hd / Cd. The old one will be thick ribs

The new one will have much thinner ribs. New Hard Drives don't like the old style cable. The power cable is the same though. You cna use the new cable for the CD without a problem. Put the Cd in the Middle connector and the Hard Drive at one end of the cable.

Oh and welcome to Major Geeks.

 

Hate to disagree with studiot but I've replaced plenty of "old Hd's" with shiney new ones using the old cables and have never had any problems at all. I'll say that the new cables are faster at data transfer though.

 

Ooops. Sorry about the double post. Must be those rotten old cables.

 

Sorry Yargy, didn't mean to be sharp but I was in a hurry.

40 wire cables may work and they may not with any given drive, there are plenty of horror stories out there.

But why chance it for a 50p cable?

It's also possibly that Arty's pc already has 80 wire connections - The manufacturer was just saving one connection by only putting both IDE devices on one channel and saving one flat cable. Dell do this for instance.
I though of that afterwards too.

 

I don't mind sharp!

But it can be strange that certain items work just fine when sometimes they shouldn't. Of my pile of PCs only one currently has an 80 wire cable and it is the only one that tells me it can't find an 80-wire cable connection when it boots!! It still runs just fine though. Maybe I should save up another 50p? rolleyes

 

Thks for the info on the hard drive.I've taken off the cd burner and hooked up the new drive now all i have to do is transfer my old drive to the new one .Any sugesstions on how to do this .Also you mentioned i should take out old drive and just put in new drive .Will xp load on the new drive? Never did a hard drive before.Installed cd burners ,dvd burners ,zip drive but no hard drives before.Thanks for you reply it helps.arty