Installing a Second Hdd

I am having problems installing a 2nd hdd into my pc.

I know that i have all the right cables. everythings hooked up correctly.

Went through BIOS but perhaps I missed a step or steps.

I saw the tutorial on here but it didnt really help me.

Can someone please walk me through the process?

EIDE or Serial ATA? is the first question anyone will ask since each uses different types of power and data cables to begin with.

The ide power connector is a 4 wire molex type with four heavy looking pins inside the off white colored plug also used for ide optical drives and some case fans. The wide flat ribbon type data cable is generally grey. The drive's jumper seen at the rear is set according to the cable position as master, slave, or cable select.

For Sata drives the main power comes from a wider but thinner 15pin connector from the supply only usable for sata hard drives, sata optical drives. The 7pin data cable is thin with each drive seeing it's own separate cable going direct to the board plugging into a separate port. Each port determines whether it is primary master/slave or secondary master/slave.

It's a Western Digital SATA hdd.

i think the problem might be with my relative unfamiliarity with BIOS and setting the master/slave system up.

Also, should I be using two separate, dedicated cords for the hdds or is the doubled lead out from the power source okay?

I plan on wiping the hdd i'm installing and using it as separate storage space.

Will someone please offer up some advice?

I've tried changing BIOS settings for a SATA slave/master and everything gets effed.

The 15pin connector coming from the supply is for power only. The second thinner cable plugs into one of the sata ports on the board being the data cable. Both are needed.

As I was mentioning before the port you plug the data cable into determines whether it is the primary or secondary, master or slave since there are no jumper settings to worry about on any Sata II drive. Some older Sata I type drives saw a jumper for changing the mode while that wouldn't apply there for you.

If your first drive is an ide type that be seen by the bios as the first in the order of hard drives installed and automatically be made the default boot device. If this is a second sata you are now adding in it likely bumped the first to the second position where you need to go into the bios and set the OS drive as default.

On most boards especially if that sees an Award-Phoenix bios you look for the boot or boot order section and scroll down to the "hard drives" item. Once you highlight that press the enter to bring up the list of drives installed. By highlighting the first OS drive you then simply use the Numpad plus "+" or minus "-" key to move it to the top there and press F10 to exit and save.