Re: OEM hard drive questions

[Adam Glauser <adamglauser@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kurt Anderson wrote:
> You have an extra cable but you haven't installed a SATA hard drive
> before?  Makes me wonder why you have a cable then.  Just because I
> don't know your knowledge of the subject, the SATA cable is different
> than an IDE cable.  At the wiki you can see the mobo plug.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

I had a similar situation just recently.  My mobo has SATA and IDE 
support and came with cables for both.

It's worth noting that the power connectors are different too.  My mobo 
came with adapters.  Dan, you'll want to make sure you either have some 
adapters or a power supply with the proper plugs.

One other thing I learned is that SATA and SATAII mostly get along fine, 
but if you're buying a SATAII drive you'll need to make sure that it has 
a jumper or something that you can set to restrict it to SATA transfer 
speeds (1.5 Gb/s).  The -300 in the product description in your OP 
probably means in the product is SATA II (3.0 Gb/s transfer speed).

Lastly, the disk management tool David mentioned is accessible by 
right-clicking "My Computer", choosing "Manage", then finding "Disk 
Management" on the tree at the left.

HTH,
Adam