Incorrect connection of the hard drive can be the reason that the system simply will not see it, if a second hard drive is connected, then all available hard drives can become invisible. Meanwhile, connecting the hard drive to the motherboard is no big deal.
Instructions
Step 1
The way the hard drive is connected to the motherboard depends on its type. Today there are two main types of hard drives: IDE (or ATA) and SATA (or Serial ATA). The SATA interface was developed in 2000 and is considered to be more advanced.
Step 2
When connecting IDE drives, you need to know the location and purpose of the controllers. On the motherboard, there are two IDE controllers (primary and secondary), to each of which two devices (master and slave) can be connected.
The master device (usually the hard disk from which Windows boots) is connected as the primary master (master), the second device is connected as the primary slave (slave). The third and fourth devices are connected in the same way.
Step 3
To directly connect devices to the motherboard, a yellow 80-pin ribbon cable is used (there are 40-pin gray ribbon cables, which are not recommended to be used due to the low data transfer rate). Connect the hard drive to one of the controllers on the motherboard. On the rear panel of the disk, you must select the connection mode - master (or DEVICE) or slave (or DEVICE 1). It is important to remember that when connected to one controller, the disks must have different connection modes, i.e. one of them must be in master mode, and the other in slave mode.
After connecting the cable, it remains to connect the power to the drive; any of the many cables coming out of the power supply will do for this.
Step 4
To connect SATA drives, the motherboard must have a corresponding connector, it is much smaller than the IDE connector and has the corresponding inscription (SATA). Connect the hard drive to the SATA connector using a dedicated cable. You don't need to set any switches here, unlike the IDE. To connect power, a special cable supplied with the hard drive is also used.
