40 MA XIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2004
Step 14 : Connect your hard drives
Caution! “Do not use both power connectors on your
Serial ATA hard drives!!”Step 15 : Prep optical drives
Now it’s time to get your optical drive (or
drives) ready for your case. If your case
uses any kind of drive rails, you need to
attach them now. Attaching drive rails can
be tricky. If you don’t place them properly,
your drive’s front bezel won’t be aligned
with the front of the case. The only way
to make adjustments is through trial and
error. You’ll have to mount the rails on the
drive, slide it into the case, and give it the
ol’ eyeball. It may take a try or two to getthe drive perfectly aligned.
Next, you need to make sure that
your optical drives are configured with
the proper master/slave settings. Most
optical drives have labels on the top (a)
which will show you the proper configu-
ration for your jumpers. (Backtrack to
step 12 if you need a refresher on config-
uring jumper settings [b]. )a
b
Next up, you need to feed data connec-
tions and power to your hard drives. If
you’re using Serial ATA drives, this is
simple. Just plug each drive into one of
your motherboard’s Serial ATA ports (a).
We recommend using the ports built
into your mobo’s chipset for the drive
that will contain Windows—you can find
out which ports on the motherboard
correspond to that Serial ATA control-
ler by consulting your manual (b). Be
very careful connecting your Serial ATA
cables. The connectors are easily broken,
so make sure you don’t put pressure
on the motherboard or hard
drive connectors. Also, some
Serial ATA drives offer both a
Serial ATA and old-fashioned
four-pin Molex power con-
nector. DO NOT USE BOTH
POWER CONNECTORS! Use
one or the other. It doesn’t
matter which.
Connecting paral-
lel ATA drives is equally
simple. With the old-style
parallel ATA ribbon cable,
you need to make sure
all of your drives are
within 18-inches of the
motherboard’s ports, and
you need to be very care-ful not to bend any of the pins on
either the mobo or the hard drive.
Line up the cable with the port, and
using even pressure, push the cable
into the port. If you are going to
install Windows on a parallel drive,
we definitely recommend using the
native parallel ATA ports. If you use
a RAID controller or ports that use
non-standard drivers, you’ll have to
endure the hassle of installing mass
storage controller drivers every time
you reinstall Windows.b
a
Build It!