Can I install 3rd hard drive into my PC?

Question

I have two hard drives already but those are too small. Both are connected into primary slot on main board. I bought another 200 GB IDE hard drive and tried to install it into secondary slot on main board. When I go to F2 to see setup, setup can find all three hard drives. However, when the pc has turned on and I go to "my computer", it ONLY shows two old hard drives. If I switch the second old hard drive and new one installation (connect 1st master hard drive with new one with one IDE cable and switch 2nd slave old hard drive to secondary master), again SETUP can find all three. BUT "My computer" still sees those 2 old hard drives. New One could not be seen???
If I remove my 2nd slave old hard drive, "my computer" can see old 1st master drive and new one......

Does that mean I could NOT install 3 hard drives into one PC??

thank you for anyone who helps.......!!!!!

Answer 1

HELLLO???? He said that BIOS was able to identify the Hard Drive, therefore obviously he had room on the channel for the drive... Here is what you need to do..


Make sure jumper is set for Secondary Master and when you boot into Windows, right click on My Computer > select manage > go to disk management > In there your Hard Drive will be seen and you will be able to Partition and Format your Hard Drive. Once partitioned and formatted, you will be able to see that Hard Drive in Windows so that you can use it..

Answer 2

The thing to check is the jumpers on the drives. Make sure that the drives are jumpered as Master/Slave. Some drives require a different jumper setting if the drive is connected without a slave attached. Don't forget that the CD/DVD drive needs to have the correct jumper setting too.

The next step is to go to the Computer Management console and verify that the system has detected all the hard drives.
1. Right click on "My Computer" and click on "Manage."
2. Click on "Device Manager" in the left window pane
3. Click on the "+" beside the "Disk drives" in the right window pane
4. Verify that all three hard drives are showing here

If you are not seeing all the drives, the problem is either the jumpers are incorrectly set or the cable is defective. I am making the assumption that there is no problem with the hard drive, itself.

If you are seeing all the drives, then you should do the next few steps.
1. Click on "Disk Management" in the left window pane
2. On the right, the window will be split into two panes...top and bottom. In the bottom pane, verify that all the drives are listed, are partitioned, formatted and are showing a drive letter.

If the drive that is not showing under "My Computer" is there, you may need to reassign it a drive letter, as it might be conflicting with another drive. You can do this by right clicking on the partition on the drive that you want to see and click on "Change Drive Letter and Paths...", choose "Change" and pick an available drive letter. Click "OK" and close things out...you should see all the attached drives.

Answer 3

Unless your motherboard supports a "Raid" configuration, you may only connect 4 IDE devices directly to the motherboard.

Unless it is an external drive, your DVD-RW is probably IDE, too.

So, it should be possible to install 3 IDE hard drives {including your boot drive(s)} and the DVD-RW.

However, if you have other IDE drives already installed on the computer(such as a CD or CD-RW drive) and wish to keep them, you will not be able to install all of the additional hard drives.

However, if you have PCI slots available, you can purchase a PCI card to add 2 or 4 more IDE devices to your motherboard. Then you can have as many as 8 IDE devices.

If you want to have more than 4 IDE devices working at a time, purchase or build a computer with the "Raid" configuration.

Answer 4

Hi Good day. Did u check your jumpers? Is the new hard drive set on master and not slave? if that is so, most likely that is your problem. Also make sure when u set it on master, any other devices on that SAME cable eg a CD ROM Device is set on slave. Check your other hard drive settings. One must be master which is the hard drive u have the windows operating system on and the other HD which is slave.

Another thing, if u have a old system such as 98 or ME, Make sure all hard drives are FAT32 Formatted cause if one is NTFS used by 2000 & XP, Win 98 & ME may not recognize it. Good luck man, Laterz!

Answer 5

I believe your problem relates to the RAID configuration on you machine. You may be limited to 4IDE inputs. You can see your drive configuration in setup. One other option is to purchase a PCI card that will allow you to aid additional IDE devices to your computer. See the articles below.

Answer 6

What operating system are you using?

Answer 7

Yes, it depends on what motherboard you have...