Computer question

[King Darkness]

< LOL!

 

[Darth Cruel]

I may be wrong, but can't you just install a new hard drive on tower units now, with the newer OSes, and it comes up as a separate drive? I have not tried as I use laptops and all-in-ones now and adding hard drives can not be done (changing hard drives is easy, I have 3 for my Gateway). But I was under the impression (don't remember wher I got the impression, though) that slaving second HDDs was no longer necessary.

 

[DinoLast]

It's ^^^^ed

 

[DinoLast]

Or It could not take any more of your downloaded music, so it killed itself

 

[Bodie The Cursed]

This Dells a PoS..

So far the Ethernet card took a poop.. Next was the Hard Drive.. Now its The power supply..

Never again...

 

[DinoLast]

a blinking light can be a number of things. It could be a motherboard problem just as much as a power supply issue.

 

[Darth Cruel]

This Dells a PoS..

So far the Ethernet card took a poop.. Next was the Hard Drive.. Now its The power supply..

Never again...

I am kind of sorry to hear this. Since Gateway stopped selling their own custom-built computers, I was going to switch to Dell.

 

[Voorhees27]

My back hurts.

 

[BadMoon]

My back hurts.

Maybe you need to poop.

 

[Voorhees27]

Maybe you need to poop.

............... no wait I did that twice already.

 

[user 7992]

This Dells a PoS..

So far the Ethernet card took a poop.. Next was the Hard Drive.. Now its The power supply..

Never again...

It sounds like you have a power conditioning issue then if that many components have failed. I am hoping you have the machine on a decent surge protector, not just a power strip. Good surge protectors cost a little more but will condition the juice coming in to your box.

And yes you can have multiple HDDs per box. It depends on the amount of free channels (IDE or SATA) that you have available on your board.

 

[Kuzeh]

@ Dell

 

[LOTRFan]

< LOL!

< LOL! < LOL! < LOL!

 

[Bodie The Cursed]

Well I ordered a new PSU. If that doesnt work Ill just go for the 2 hard drives in my gaming tower.. Is this difficult?

Should I hire someone?.. I'm a noob when i comes to tinking w/ a CPU's inards.. However I suspect its easy and I"ll get bent over when taking it to a CPU tech..

And yes I do have a high end Surge protecter.. I just think that Dells components are wack..

 

[user 7992]

Truly some of their home based machines are crummy but most of their enterprise equipment is decent. Their tech support is top notch too.

Most motherboards are color coded these days so just add your extra HDD, pull a power connector to it, then study the drive that's already there and run another connector (SATA most likely) to the new drive. Reboot and your OS should recognize the new drive and assign a drive letter for it.

If you get stuck there's bound to be a tutorial for adding another drive with a little searching. Find a friend nearby that's tech savvy instead of taking it to Best Buy or some other awful place that will charge an exorbitent fee.

 

[El Roranous]

Maybe you need to poop.

Badmoon kitty says ahhhhh wuh-leef.

 

[darthviper107]

Well I ordered a new PSU. If that doesnt work Ill just go for the 2 hard drives in my gaming tower.. Is this difficult?

Should I hire someone?.. I'm a noob when i comes to tinking w/ a CPU's inards.. However I suspect its easy and I"ll get bent over when taking it to a CPU tech..

And yes I do have a high end Surge protecter.. I just think that Dells components are wack..

I had power supply issues, it didn't have enough wattage for the what my computer needed, it died last summer then I got a free replacement but that one started shutting off the computer randomly after about a year, but I took some stuff out and it ran fine.


You can very easily install a new hard drive, first make sure what type you need--IDE is the big ribbon and SATA is a smaller wire that goes in easy.

Just open up your computer, make sure your drive is set to the right position (it'll show a diagram on the back with little wire prongs that has a little plastic thing that covers two of them, just follow the diagram). Screw it in near your other drive, it should come with some screws. Then just plug it into the cable, most likely your main hard drive is connected to the end of the ribbon, so plug it into the second connector on the ribbon. Or if it's SATA you just get a new SATA cable and plug it in to the drive and an open SATA port.

And don't forget to plug in a power cable to the drive, it might be a 4-pin molex or if it's SATA it's got a different connector. Once you start up windows it'll say it's found new hardware and it'll install the drivers for it, then you'll have an extra drive when you go to My Computer.


It really is quite easy, if it's too daunting then see if you can find someone you know that can do it. Don't pay Best Buy or someplace to do it--again it's really really easy and they'll charge you an arm and a leg.