Components

Connecting an old hard drive to a new motherboard. What are hard drive slots? Determining the interface on the motherboard

They brought me a problematic PC the other day, suffering from brakes, freezes and other glitches. Its far from young motherboard has only an IDE interface, so the new terabyte SATA-HDD was connected via a specially purchased SATA PCI controller (based on the VIA VT6421 chip). The Windows system event log was full of error messages about disk operations, which apparently was the cause of the problems.

Checking the HDD (SMART, surface, file system), replacing the SATA cable did not fix the situation. The computer used to work stably with the old IDE disk, the BIOS motherboard the latter was sewn up, therefore, suspicion fell on the operation of the SATA controller. Moreover, in the magazine Windows errors his name sometimes "blushed" too. But experiments with the controller did not bring much success - neither updating the drivers nor moving it to another PCI slot helped. True, the hard drive seemed to behave better when connected to another SATA port of the controller, but even here another "ambush" was waiting - with a DVD drive connected through the second SATA port, the controller for some reason stubbornly refused to boot the system from the HDD. In general, either the controller itself was hefty crooked, or it was just bad "friends" with this motherboard or hard drive. By the way, reviews about controllers on these chips in the internet are not flattering -

I saw the way out in replacing the controller with a similar one, and preferably on a different chip, so as not to run into the same problems. This is of course, if you do not resort to a radical and troublesome method - replacing the motherboard. In our stores, from inexpensive options, mainly products based on the same VT6421 were offered ... And then I saw such a thing on sale - costing only about 400 rubles, became interested and decided to try it. As a result, the SATA HDD connected to the IDE connector through this "tricky piece of hardware" was seen by the BIOS as if it were an IDE disk and it worked without any errors. The HDD activity LED on the system unit joyfully began to fulfill its duties, from which it had previously been released by the "good" PCI controller. I left the DVD drive connected, as it was, through the SATA controller on the VIA chip. There were no problems with reading and writing CDs.

The converter is quite compact, it receives energy through the FDD power connector (there is an additional adapter in the kit), it has a data transfer indicator, it does not require any drivers. In addition, due to its bidirectionality, it also allows you to use an IDE drive via a SATA interface. In the case when you need to connect one device and there is no need for RAID arrays, this is a pretty good economical alternative to PCI controllers.

When the first computers appeared, all programs, games and other files took up almost no disk space. Now things are quite different, and often you have to install an additional storage medium. Therefore, each user must know how to connect a second hard drive to a computer. In fact, this is not difficult to do, you just need to follow a simple instruction.

First, the device must be purchased in the store. It should be taken into account that hard drive There are several connection interfaces. After purchasing the purchase, you can proceed to install the device.

Preparing for installation

How many hard drives are already connected to the motherboard? Most often, a computer has only one hard drive, so installing a second drive is not difficult. In most cases, the HDD is located directly under the DVD-ROM, so finding it is not difficult;
Is there extra space to install a second hard drive? In the event that it is not possible to install a second or third disk, then you will have to purchase a USB drive;
What type of cable is used to connect a hard drive to a computer? If the purchased device does not have the same interface as on a PC, it will be difficult to install it.

Please note that you will need a 3.5-inch hard drive. Small drives designed for laptops do not need to be bought.

Physical drive connection

If the system unit has not yet been disassembled, disassemble it. Now it is recommended to get rid of static electricity. This is done by any means known to you. If desired, you can purchase a special grounding bracelet in the store.

After a little manipulation, the hard drive will be fixed in the case, now all that remains is to connect the hard drive. Before turning on the power cable and cable, it should be noted that the procedure is slightly different for the IDE and SATA interface.

IDE Interface

When connecting a disk with an IDE interface, it is recommended to pay attention to such a nuance as setting the operating mode:

Master (main).
Slave (subordinate).

If an additional hard drive is installed, then the Slave mode must be enabled. To do this, you need to use a jumper (jumper), which is installed in second place. The first row includes Master mode. It is important to note that on modern computers, the jumper can be completely removed. The system will automatically determine which is the hard master.

At the next step, you need to connect the second or third hard drive to the "mother". To do this, the IDE interface is connected to a loop (wide, thin wire). The second end of the cable is connected to the IDE 1 Secondary socket (the main drive is connected to the zero socket).

The final stage of the connection is the power supply. To do this, a white chip with four wires is connected to the appropriate connector. The wires come directly from the power supply (box with wires and fan).

SATA interface

Unlike IDE, a SATA drive has two L-shaped connectors. One is for the power connection and the other is for the data cable. It should be noted that such a hard drive does not have a jumper.

The data cable is connected to a narrow connector. The other end is connected to a special connector. Most often, there are 4 such ports on the motherboard, but there are an exception and there are only 2 ports. One of the slots may be occupied by a DVD drive.

There are cases when a disk with a SATA interface was purchased, but no such connectors were found on the motherboard. In this case, it is recommended to additionally purchase a SATA controller, which is installed in the PCI slot.

The next step is to connect the power. L-shaped wide cable is connected to the appropriate connector. If the drive has an additional power connector (IDE interface), just use one of the connectors. This completes the physical connection of the hard drive.

BIOS setup

When all the manipulations with the hard drive are completed, you should turn on the computer, and then enter the BIOS. It is important to note that the launch of the BIOS on each computer is carried out in its own way. To do this, use the key:

delete;

After entering the BIOS, you need to go to the configuration settings. It is important to designate the boot from the disk on which the operating system is installed. If the priority is set incorrectly, the system simply will not boot.

In the event that one of the disks is not displayed in the BIOS, it means that the hard drive was not connected correctly or the cable was damaged. It is recommended to inspect all wires and reconnect (do not forget to turn off the computer).

Once the BIOS setup is completed, you can boot with the operating system. After that, it remains only to assign a drive letter.

Final stage

Since connecting a hard drive to a computer is not enough, you need to make the final configuration directly from under Windows. On some computers, this procedure is carried out automatically. To check this, you should open "My Computer", and then see if new disk.

If nothing happened, you need to start the control panel. Then select "Administration". As soon as a new window opens, you will need to select "Computer Management". In the left column, you need to find the "Disk Management" tab (on some computers, "Disk Manager").

In the lower part of the window, select disk 1 (if more than 2 hard drives are connected, select the disk with the highest number). This will be the new hard drive;
You must assign a letter to the logical volume. To do this, click on the disk right click mouse, and then select "Assign letter";
As soon as the disk is assigned new letter, it needs to be formatted. The procedure can take a long time, it all depends on the size of the hard drive. When formatting, it is important to choose file system NTFS.

When the formatting process is complete, a new disk will appear in the root directory of "My Computer". If for some reason it is not possible to connect the HDD using the built-in manager, it is recommended to use third-party programs.

An excellent tool for working with hard drives is Partition manager. In addition, such a utility allows you to split a disk into several logical volumes.

Conclusion

Connecting a hard drive takes no more than 15 minutes. If you follow the instructions, there should be no difficulties. Modern computers don't need additional setting BIOS, of course, if the disks are not installed in absolutely new computer. Also, don't forget that operating system depends on how voluminous the connected hard drive can be.

Video review: connecting a hard drive

I recently received a question in the mail:

Hello Maxim. Your subscriber writes to you with a proposal - a request. Tell us how to properly connect the 2nd hard drive and 2 DVD burners. I think this is of interest to many ordinary users PC.

The fact is that it is impossible to describe all the connection methods and options in one note, due to the variety of connection interfaces and their combinations on motherboards from different manufacturers.

On the one hand, only two connection interfaces are now most common hard drives and optical drives: IDE (IDE) And SATA (SATA), and it seems that connecting everything is simple.

On the other hand, motherboard manufacturers have done very a large number of boards with a variety of configurations of these interfaces: ranging from 2/4 IDE and 1 SATA at the time the SATA interface entered the market before 1 IDE and 6/8 SATA in currently(hereinafter, the number in front of the interface means the maximum possible number of devices that can be connected via the interface to the motherboard).

At the same time, there are such motherboards in which the simultaneous operation of all interfaces is impossible, i.e. for example, when connecting one disk via SATA turned off 3rd and 4th IDE.

With a gradual transition to the interface SATA everything will become easier one device - one connector.

This means that each device is connected to its own connector, and the user does not need to additionally configure the device and think about which side of the cable to connect to the motherboard and which side to the device. And in case of problems, it is better to tell in detail about the option where the problems arose.

My home PC (motherboard GigaByte GA-P35-DS3L) has two SATA hard drives, one DVD-RW (DVD-RW) SATA and one DVD IDE. How they are connected, I will show in the following picture:

The figure shows approximately 1/6 of the motherboard. Green- this is a connector for IDE devices, I have a DVD IDE connected to it. yellow- these are connectors for SATA devices, I have two SATA hard drives and one DVD-RV SATA connected to them.

The southbridge heatsink and PCI-Express slot retainer are shown to help locate slots more quickly. In most motherboards, the IDE and SATA connectors are located near the southbridge.

The following figures show cables for connecting IDE devices. These cables have 80 cores and can be referred to as "IDE-100/133 cable" or "ATA-100/133 cable". There are also options for 40 cores, but they are practically not used anymore.

The following figure shows the cables for connecting SATA devices. GIGABYTE makes more than just connecting cables SATA but "with conveniences".

The first is a metal retainer at both ends of the cable. This latch prevents the cable from accidentally disconnecting, for example, when you insert or remove the video card from the system block and accidentally touch the cable.

The second is an angled connector at one end of the cable. Such a cable is convenient to use for short cases, when the cable must be led directly down from the DVD or hard drive. I recommend using these cables.

At the moment, other manufacturers began to complete their motherboards with cables with such "options". You can also try purchasing them separately.

If you have purchased a new hard drive or DVD with a SATA connector, and your PC is not older than 2 years, then connecting via SATA is very simple.

First- install the device in the case. DVD - as you like, and a hard drive - preferably so that there is a small empty space above and below it for better ventilation.

Second- connect the information connector of the device and a free connector on the motherboard.

Third - connect power to the device. A device may have a new type of power connector (for SATA), it may have an old type (Molex), or both connectors.

The following picture shows the rear side of the hard drive as an example and the connectors are labeled: SATA power, SATA information, Molex power.

If there is only one connector, then connect it.

With the advent of SATA devices, power supply manufacturers began to equip their units with special power connectors for connecting such devices.

Most new devices are already being released without a Molex connector. If there are no SATA connectors in your PC power supply or they are already occupied, then you can use a special power adapter, which is shown in the following picture.

The white 4-pin connector is the connector Molex. The two black flat connectors are connectors for SATA devices.

If the power connector two, then you need to connect any one of them, but not both! I recommend using the power connector for SATA devices.

After that, you can turn on the PC, go into the BIOS and check that the device is visible. If it is not visible, all SATA connectors must be switched to AUTO mode. Then you need to save the changes in BIOS and exit. After that, you can work with the device

If you are not sure how to connect the device correctly or if you are having connection problems, then watch the video tutorial below or go through our step-by-step video course "Assembling a computer from A to Z".

The article uses materials from the site www.nix.ru

Hello! I got an old laptop, I decided to give it a new life. What came out of it, what “nuances” arose.
They gave me "for spare parts" old comrades Acer laptop Travelmate 290. “The old one still doesn’t work.” The “breakdown” was that someone had already gotten to me to “spare parts” - missing HDD and operative. Threw others, borrowed for a while - it works. Somehow it was a pity to start up the old man for scrap.
I understood that the idea of restoring an old laptop to a Pentium M was a pointless business. But, somehow, the hand did not rise, and the laptop looks like it was just standing there and the dust was blown off. I was very surprised by the perfect condition.
So, it's decided, I'll do it! I didn’t have an IDE disk available, I looked at the prices from local “hucksters” for details. Yeah... - 20 euros for a used 60Gb, this is the cheapest I found, for a used disk 10 years (minimum) ago. I decided to look at the adapters, the Chinese comrades have everything for everything, it has long been known. Found. Paid. By the way, it came quickly - in 10 days. They threw it right into the box. Yellow envelope. Inside -

I planned to “screw” it to a laptop with a Kingdian 60Gb SSD. Inserted on the withdrawn fee. Nothing appeared in the BIOS ... But, while I was waiting, I studied the topic a little.
So, nuance number 1 - there is a jumper on the adapter board

Initially it is worth it. We remove, turn on - yes, everything is ok, even the name and volume are displayed correctly.
Began to collect - nuance number 2

I also expected this, which is why the SSD was chosen. It can be taken apart and

Everything fits, and there is still room left :-)
Initially, the canonical Windows system xp. There were no problems with its installation. The latest BIOS was flashed existing version. And then it became possible Windows installation 7. It didn’t work before the firmware - at the final stage there was a black screen, but this is a computer problem ... On XP, the disk gave out such speeds -

It is clear that here everything rests on the IDE, and there is no way for the SSD to open up here, but I was expecting a worse result.
In general - I'm satisfied. Well, for the future, if someone asks me to replace the IDE disk on the laptop (and there is still a lot of good stuff on hand), I will know what to do.
Yes, I almost forgot - if someone buys such adapters, you should know that they are of 2 types - they differ in the location of the IDE connector - like mine, and “inverted” - this must be taken into account, otherwise the disk may not get up. Well, consider the dimensions - they match the dimensions on the product page (69mm x 14mm). It's just that the HDD may not fit into some laptops, you have to be smart with the case.
Here he is - alive and working

I also installed 2 * 512 RAM. IN this moment On him Linux Mint 13 Xfe. Everything works.
Why did I need it? I don't know if I took pity on him. Or maybe I'm getting old, I'm drawn to antiques? :-) Seriously, one idea has been ripening for a long time, in which a computer with a full-fledged LPT port will be needed, and here it will come in handy for me, perhaps.
Thanks to everyone who read! All health!

Hello! In we examined the hard drive device in detail, but I specifically didn’t say anything about interfaces - that is, ways of interacting a hard drive and other computer devices, or, more specifically, ways of interacting (connecting) a hard drive and a computer.

Why didn't he say? And because this topic is worthy of a volume no less than an entire article. Therefore, today we will analyze in detail the most popular hard disk interfaces at the moment. I’ll make a reservation right away that the article or post (whichever is more convenient) this time will have an impressive size, but unfortunately there’s no way to go without it, because if you write briefly, it will turn out to be completely incomprehensible.

Computer hard drive interface concept

First, let's define the term "interface". talking plain language(namely, I will express myself as much as possible, because the blog is designed for ordinary people, such as you and me), interface - the way devices interact with each other and not only devices. For example, many of you have probably heard about the so-called "friendly" interface of a program. What does it mean? This means that the interaction between a person and a program is easier, does not require much effort on the part of the user, compared to the "unfriendly" interface. In our case, the interface is just a way of interacting specifically with the hard drive and the computer motherboard. It is a set of special lines and a special protocol (a set of rules for data transmission). That is, purely physically - this is a cable (cable, wire), on both sides of which there are inputs, and on the hard drive and the motherboard there are special ports (places where the cable is connected). Thus, the concept of an interface includes a connecting cable and ports located on the devices connected by it.

Well, now the most "juice" of today's article, let's go!

Types of interaction between hard drives and the computer motherboard (types of interfaces)

So, the first in line we will have the most "ancient" (80s) of all, in modern HDDs it is no longer found, this is the IDE interface (aka ATA, PATA).

IDE- translated from English "Integrated Drive Electronics", which literally means - "built-in controller". It was only later that the IDE was called the interface for data transfer, since the controller (located in the device, usually in hard drives and optical drives) and the motherboard had to be connected with something. It (IDE) is also called ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment), it turns out something like "Advanced Technology Attachment". The fact is that ATA - Parallel Data Transfer Interface, for which soon (literally immediately after the release of SATA, which will be discussed below), it was renamed PATA (Parallel ATA).

What can I say, although the IDE was very slow ( throughput data transmission channel ranged from 100 to 133 megabytes per second in different versions IDE - and even then purely theoretically, in practice much less), however, it allowed you to connect two devices to the motherboard at the same time using one cable.

Moreover, in the case of connecting two devices at once, the bandwidth of the line was divided in half. However, this is far from the only drawback of the IDE. The wire itself, as can be seen from the figure, is wide enough and will take the lion's share when connected free space in the system unit, which will negatively affect the cooling of the entire system as a whole. All in all IDE is outdated morally and physically, for this reason, the IDE connector is no longer found on many modern motherboards, although until recently they were still installed (in the amount of 1 pc.) On budget boards and on some boards in the middle price segment.

The next, no less popular than the IDE at one time, interface is SATA (Serial ATA), a characteristic feature of which is serial data transmission. It is worth noting that at the time of this writing, it is the most massive for use in a PC.

There are 3 main versions (revisions) of SATA, which differ from each other in bandwidth: rev. 1 (SATA I) - 150 Mb/s, rev. 2 (SATA II) - 300 Mb/s, rev. 3 (SATA III) - 600 Mb/s. But this is only in theory. In practice, the write / read speed of hard drives usually does not exceed 100-150 Mb / s, and the remaining speed is not yet in demand and only affects the speed of interaction between the controller and the HDD cache memory (increases the speed of disk access).

Innovations include - backwards compatible all versions of SATA (a drive with a SATA rev. 2 connector can be connected to a motherboard with a SATA rev. 3 connector, etc.), improved appearance and convenience of connecting / disconnecting the cable, the length of the cable increased compared to IDE (1 meter maximum, versus 46 cm on IDE interface), support NCQ functions since the first revision. I hasten to please the owners of old devices that do not support SATA - there are adapters from PATA to SATA, this is a real way out of the situation, allowing you to avoid spending money on buying a new motherboard or a new hard drive.

Also, unlike PATA, the SATA interface provides for "hot-swapping" of hard drives, which means that when the computer's system unit is powered on, you can attach / detach hard drives. True, for its implementation it will be necessary to dig a little into BIOS settings and enable AHCI mode.

Next in line - eSATA (External SATA)- was created in 2004, the word "external" indicates that it is used to connect external hard drives. Supports " hot swap" drives. The length of the interface cable has been increased compared to SATA - the maximum length is now as much as two meters. eSATA is not physically compatible with SATA, but has the same bandwidth.

But eSATA is far from the only way to connect external devices to your computer. For example firewire- serial high-speed interface for connection external devices, including HDD.

Supports "hot-swap" hard drives. In terms of throughput, it is comparable to USB 2.0, and with the advent of USB 3.0, it even loses in speed. However, it still has the advantage that FireWire is able to provide isochronous data transfer, which contributes to its use in digital video, as it allows real-time data transfer. Undoubtedly, FireWire is popular, but not as popular as, for example, USB or eSATA. It is rarely used to connect hard drives; in most cases, various multimedia devices are connected using FireWire.

USB (Universal Serial Bus), perhaps the most common interface used to connect external hard drives, flash drives and solid state drives(SSD). As in the previous case, there is support for "hot swapping", a rather large maximum length of the connecting cable - up to 5 meters in case USB usage 2.0, and up to 3 meters if USB 3.0 is used. It is probably possible to make a longer cable length, but in this case, the stable operation of the devices will be in question.

Transmission speed USB data 2.0 is about 40 Mb / s, which is generally low. Yes, of course, for ordinary everyday work with files, a channel bandwidth of 40 Mb / s is enough for the eyes, but as soon as we talk about working with big files, willy-nilly you will begin to look towards something more high-speed. But it turns out there is a way out, and its name is USB 3.0, the bandwidth of which, compared to its predecessor, has increased 10 times and is about 380 Mb / s, that is, almost like SATA II, even a little more.

There are two types of contacts USB cable, they are type "A" and type "B", located at opposite ends of the cable. Type "A" - controller (motherboard), type "B" - connected device.

USB 3.0 (type "A") is compatible with USB 2.0 (type "A"). Types "B" are not compatible with each other, as you can see from the figure.

Thunderbolt(Light Peak). In 2010, Intel demonstrated the first computer with this interface, and a little later, the equally well-known Apple company joined Intel to support Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is cool enough (well, how else, Apple knows what it's worth investing in), is it worth talking about supporting such features as: the notorious "hot swap", simultaneous connection with several devices at once, really "huge" data transfer speed (20 times faster than USB 2.0).

The maximum cable length is only 3 meters (probably more is not needed). However, in spite of everything benefits listed, Thunderbolt is not yet "mass" and is used mainly in expensive devices.

Move on. Next in line we have a couple of interfaces that are very similar to each other - these are SAS and SCSI. Their similarity lies in the fact that they are both used primarily in servers that require high performance and the shortest possible access time to the hard disk. However, there is also back side medals - all the advantages of these interfaces are offset by the price of devices that support them. Hard drives that support SCSI or SAS are much more expensive.

SCSI(Small Computer System Interface) - a parallel interface for connecting various external devices (not just hard drives).

It was developed and standardized even a little earlier than the first version of SATA. The latest version of SCSI has "hot swap" support.

SAS(Serial Attached SCSI), which replaced SCSI, had to solve a number of shortcomings of the latter. And I must say - he succeeded. The fact is that due to its "parallelism" SCSI used a common bus, so only one of the devices could work with the controller at the same time, SAS does not have this drawback.

In addition, it is backwards compatible with SATA, which is undoubtedly a big plus. Unfortunately, the cost of hard drives with SAS interface is close to the cost of SCSI hard drives, but there is no way to get rid of this, you have to pay for the speed.

If you are not tired yet, I propose to consider one more interesting way HDD connections - NAS(Network Attached Storage). Network attached storage systems (NAS) are very popular these days. In fact, this is a separate computer, a kind of mini-server responsible for storing data. It connects to another computer via network cable and is controlled from another computer through a regular browser. All this is necessary in cases where a large disk space is required, which is used by several people at once (in the family, at work). Data from network storage transmitted to users' computers either via a regular cable (Ethernet) or via WiFi assistance. In my opinion, a very convenient thing.

I think that's all for today. I hope you liked the material, I suggest subscribing to blog updates so as not to miss anything (the form in the upper right corner) and we will meet you in the next blog articles.