Put a hard drive in a floppy drive slot
 

I have an old computer that has a 20gb hard drive. It also has a cd-rom and a floppy drive. Everything is IDE interface. It only has one hard drive expansion bay, but I have two 10 gig hard drives that I would like to install.
My question is; can i take out the floppy drive and replace it with a hard drive and use the FDD cable with the HDD?

Short answer no:

Longer answer: The floppy drive bay is too small to fit a HD, and the FDD cable is not a 40pin IDE cable.

Actually, I disagree. I mean the size of a 3.5 in floppy drive bay is:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/case/baysSizes-c.html
4.00 x 5.75 x 1.00
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16821121001
5.7" x 4.0" x 1.0"

The size of a HDD is:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...Specifications
4.000 x 5.787 x 1.028

So, I think that physically, it will fit. The problem is, whether you have a spare IDE interface ... which you probably don't, so then the answer would still be no.

The slots for the floppy and hard drive are identical size, but mounting holes are in different position

You can usually match at least 2 holes when installing the hard drive in the floppy slot, and pad above and below the drive from the other side so it won't be loose to bump around (use something small that won't block much air like a piece of plastic)

You can install one hard drive in its intended place, and 4 identical brackets (even pieces of a big zip tie will do) from its screws to the matching 4 screws on the other drive, so that it's suspended below the first one

Either way is ok as long as the drive is not loose in its place and is not free to bump at metal surfaces when it works and vibrates, and nothing conductive touches its circuit board

If the hard drives are used, mount them only in the same position in which they have worked before. A drive that was laying flat (normal) should be mounted the same way, and a drive that was standing vertically or on the side should be mounted with the same side up



The 34 wire floppy cable is different from the 40/80 wire hard drive cable. Instead, use a hard drive cable with extra plug (1 at each end and 1 in the center) and connect 2 of the drives to the cable

When connecting 2 drives (of either type) to the same cable, set one as Master and one as Slave with the jumper on the drive. Some computers will reliably boot only if the drive containing grub (or lilo) is set as Master on Primary IDE (that's drive 1 in the examples)

Examples :

Primary IDE ------------------------------------ Hard drive 1 (Master)
Secondary IDE -------- CD Drive (Slave) -------- Hard drive 2 (Master)

Primary IDE -------- Hard drive 2 (Slave) -------- Hard drive 1 (Master)
Secondary IDE ------------------------------------ CD drive (Master)

Yes I have installed a 3.5 hard drive in a floppy drive bay. As stated it isn't a perfect fit. Dell's are nice because they have common slide mounts.

As already stated you can not connect the IDE hard drive to a FDD cable. The interface is completely different.
However, depends on the motherboard but it might have more then one IDE controller. Is this computer one that is listed in your sig?

Are the CDROM and hard drive connected to the same cable?
Does the motherboard have more the one IDC connector of the same type that plugs into the hard drive? You can also look at the BIOS to see if it has more the one IDE controller.

Yes, it is the same one in my sig.
Thanks for the replies.
So I can't connect the hard drive to the floppy cable, got that.

I will check the setup of the IDE cables to the mobo when I get home. Maybe I can put one of my extra IDE cables to use.

I found a PDF user manual for my mobo. Its an ASUS P5S-VM.
The part of it about IDE connectors is attached as a picture.

From the picture, yes you can add a hard drive. I don't know if your CD is currently slaved to your primary controller or not, but in any case if you wish to keep the CD and the current hard you will need two ribbons. You may be able to keep the floppy also. Does the computer have an empty 5.25" bay? If so I would get a 5.25" to 3.5" kit and install it in one of those. This way you don't leave a hole in the front where the floppy was removed and a floppy still comes in handy from time to time. If you don't have an unused power cable you will also need a splitter.

Nothing special, this is common to all IDE drives and all boards

The part about OS selection is right only for Windows 95 / 98, which the board was designed for

With Linux you have to place grub / lilo on the master drive, and the actual OS (root partition) can go anywhere else

With Windows it's recommended to install Windows on the 1st partition of the primary master drive, as in the manual. If you use dual boot, grub might be able to boot Windows from another partition, but i think its best to place Windows where it wants to be and Linux somewhere else

I'm looking at the IDE connectors right now, and there is one cable in the primary IDE slot that connects only to a master (hard drive with OS). Then there is one cable in the secondary IDE slot that connects with a master and a slave.
The CD-ROM drive is connected as a master to the secondary port (there is no slave - gonna put one hard drive here).

So do I just replace the primary IDE cable with one that has a master AND slave connector in the same cable? - then have one hdd as master and another as slave?

It's been a long time since I used 98se, but as long as you leave the hard drive with windows as primary master you should be okay. The only problem I remember that you may encounter is if the drive letter for your CD changes some programs may not find it. You can fix this by assigning the drive letters in windows or reinstalling the program. You can have up to 4 IDE drives, so if you can find room to mount them you could put both of you 10 gig HDs and still keep your current HD and CD.
BTW You can mount the HD at any angle on any flat surface anywhere in the case. Just be sure not to block ventilation, the cables will reach without being damaged, and it's secure and not contacting anything other than the case.

Thank you guys! I had to take out the mobo to access the IDE controllers, then put in a IDE cable that has a slave and a master.
Tomorrow I have to put it back together...

Thanks again, learned something else today.

The problem is when a drive had been used for some time. The bearings within "get used" to one position and sometimes fail if put to work in another position later

Yes this can happen in rare cases. On the other hand I had one that quit working horizontal, but would work mounted vertical. This was back in the days of dos so I installed dos to a new hard drive and then copied everything from the old to the new. I continued to used it until I upgraded my system. I installed games and some programs to it, but used the new hard drive for saving data. Personally I recommend getting a kit to mount it in a empty 5.25 bay if there is one. The kits cost less than $5.00 on ebay and make a clean neat install. http://cgi.ebay.com/Internal-3-5-5-2...item4150e4138c

There is only one 5.25" bay, and my CD-ROM is in it. lol