# Installing 3 hard drives. Advice?



## the.diddler (Nov 20, 2005)

I'm setting up a tower with these used parts I bought. 
MB: ECS 741GX-M
Athlon 1.6GHZ
512MB
DVD+R Memorex 16x Burner
HD1: Western Digital 15GB
HD2: Barracuda 7200.7
HD3: Maxtor (3.5 Series) 300GB

What would be the "best way" to connect and configure the 3 hard drives and burner? I am not sure how to go about this. I was thinking of using the 15GB drive as the boot drive, and setting it to master. Please excuse my little knowledge, but then again, that's why I'm here! =)

Rose


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

Use the fastest drive as the boot drive, its unlikely to be the 15 GB.

Other than that, not much in the way of choice to influence things, but we have no idea what Windows version you are using (as to addressing a 300 GB drive) or if you connect via SATA or PATA (though with a motherboard of that age, IDE PATA is assumed)

The boot drive would be jumpered as Master. You can only have one Master and one Slave on each IDE cable.


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## the.diddler (Nov 20, 2005)

I will be installing XP Pro, and yes I have confirmed it is an IDE PATA. The newest drive is the 300GB, so I'm guessing this would be the fastest of the three, therefore the best candidate as the boot drive. Are there any conflicts or issues I should be looking out for?


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## linskyjack (Aug 28, 2004)

Drive size has nothing to do with speed. Rpm's and cache size does.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

linsky, while the factors you state are certainly true, I'll be willing to bet that any 15gig drive is pretty slow. In addition, the sectors per track has a significant bearing on transfer speed, and a 15gig drive is old enough to have far less track density. I'd be pretty amazed if that 15gig drive had the largest cache either. So, I'm left with the question, what exactly was the point of your post?


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## VaporTrace (Aug 1, 2004)

Hey there,
I'm guessing that's an 80 GB not a 200GB baracuda.
If it were me, I would partition the 300GB down for (I presume a XP OS) a primary OS partition and install programs and movies on the secondary of the 300GB. I'd use the 80GB with the burner and save the 15GB for a secondary computer like a home web server, data backup server or something.


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## kaaos (Jan 10, 2006)

dont forget to add a fan if you are going to be running 3 drives. dont want to over heat the case and ruin the drives.


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