Member Avatar for Veritas24

So I am trying to put an IDE Hard drive in to my new computer that has a SATA hard drive already installed. But the geniuses at Dell only put one ide port on my motherboard and the eide cable that runs off that one controls my cd rom and dvd rom drives. So.. How do I Install my IDE hard drive without an open port to connect to? Is dell really this stupid or am i missing something? They gave me like 3 extra SATA ports.. but i need an IDE !!!! HELP PLEASE!!!!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by goldeagle2005

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Member Avatar for goldeagle2005

Since you have one port with two devices connected, you need to get a PCI-IDE expansion card. This is nothing but a regular PCI card with 2-4 IDE ports. You can connect your new hard drive to this board.

Member Avatar for chrisbliss18

Live and learn Veritas. It's exactly because of situations like your's that causes me to build each machine I use.

I doubt that you only have one IDE channel though, most boards have two IDE channels minimum. What is the model of your system? You can also use Everest to find out what model motherboard you have. Let me know the model number of your system and the motherboard if possible.

If you end up not having any additional IDE channels and are set on using an IDE drive, I'd recommend getting a PCI IDE controller board, moving one of your optical drives to it, and adding your IDE harddrive to built-in IDE channel.

Member Avatar for goldeagle2005

I doubt that you only have one IDE channel though, most boards have two IDE channels minimum. What is the model of your system? You can also use

I've seen many motherboards with one IDE port. I hate those mobos

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