Building your PC:
Installing the Internal Drives

The images to the left show the case in its original conditon (with all the fascias in place and no single gap in the front). As I need one 5.25" bay and one 3.5" bay (for the DVD and floppy drives, respectively) I chose to utilize the bottom of the bank of 5.25" drive bays and the top of the bank of 3.5" bays (the holes on the right-hand image).

There's actually a very good reason for this in that if the drives are positioned close together it's often possbile to use a single power cable to supply power to both of them (which keeps more power connectors free to power more peripherals). I'll be using the same principle for the internal hard drives later on in this article.

To access the spaces for the drives you'll need to pop off the front fascias. These are generally simple pieces of plastic with flanges on each side that fix them to the case. Usually the top flange can be pushed out easily from inside the case. Once you have access to one flange the remainder can be simply pulled away with a quick tug.

In many cases (as in the example on the left) you will see that the front fascias are actually backed by a rear plate. These aid in keeping the case rigid but are only attached loosely at four points (which you can just about see in the image). Obviously if you want to place a drive in any of these positions you can just twist the metal plate backwards and forwards until it falls away. This opens a hole into the case through which you can insert the drive. When you have prepared your drive bays you will have holes that go right through to the inside of the case (as in the image below).

Once you've opened up the holes for the drives you're now ready to insert the drives yourself into the case. The next section explains how to prepare each drive and how to insert and attach it into the case.

The first drive to be tackled is the DVD drive, mainly because this is the upper drive in the pair of drive I want to fit. The front and rear of the drive is shown above left and above top right. You'll notice that the drive has a number of holes in the rear. Going from left to right these fixings are: 1. audio 1; 2. audio 1, 3. master/slave jumpers; 4. IDE cable fixing and 5. power cable fixing. The audio data cable I'm using fits into slot 2 with the left autdio output (red) on the left hand side of the drive. The jumper setting for this drive is a 'master' as it's the only drive on the second IDE channel on the motherboard (I have only a single hard drive but if you have more than a single drive set the DVD drive to a secondary/slave position). Next along is the IDE cable which is the same one as the hard drive IDE cable. For modern drives the cable itself has a little protrusion on the upper surface (see below) so it can only be inserted one way). As a result the red line on the ribbon cable will always match pin 1 of the IDE socket on the drive. The image with all the cables attached is shown above (right, bottom).

The image on the left shows an IDE cable. As you see, there's a protruberance on the upper surface which means that the cable will only fit into the back of the DVD drive one way. As a result there can be no error in fitting this cable to its corresponding drive.

First thread the cables through the 5.25" slot in the front of the motherboard (above, left) then insert the DVD drive into the slot and push it gently home. As soon as the front of the drive lies flush with the front of the computer case the screw holes in the side of the drive should line up with the corresponding screw holes on the insede of the case.

Becore I continue, I need to mention a small aside on fixing screws. As you'll see from the image to the left there are a number of screws that you can use to fix the internal drives in place. However, if you look carefully at the various screws you'll see that one pair has a narrower thread than the other. In general the screws with the narrow thread are used to fix drives that extend to the outside (such as floppy, cd and dvd drives) and the screws with larger threads are used to fix the purely internal dirves, such as hard disk drives.

In the image of the empty case to the left the box picked out by a red outline shows precisely where the DVD drive fits into the main body of the case. This region of the case is only a little more than 5.25" wide, meaning that the drive fits snugly inside. It also has screw holes and a slot so that it's possible to secure the drive securely in place using two screws on both sides of the drive. Obviously the drive needs to be as flush as possible with the front of the case, but perhaps more importantly the fixing holes in the drive need to be matched up to the screw holes on the retaining frame.

As you can see from the image above, the DVD drive actually has four retaining holes in it. These can be aligned with a number of holes in the case's retaining area. As a result it should be fairly easy to fix the drive with appropariate screws, as above. The more screws you use the more secure the drive is and the less it rattles in its housing, thus you reduce noise (though using four screws are generally more than enough).

Above you'll see an image of the floppy disk drive (left). The top image on the right hand side shows the rear of this drive. This is a fairly simple drive with a space for a power cable (the white area in the middle) and a space for a data cable (the black socket on the right hand side). The data cable for floppy drive is smaller than that for a DVD or hard-disk drive so it's not easy to confuse them. Insert this into the drive so that the red line on the cable matches to pin 1 on the drive itself (for most modern drives this isn't a problem as the drive will only fit one way). You can see the drive with its data cable attached above on the bottom right hand image.

As for the floppy disk drive, it should be inserted into the case as was done for the DVD drive. First, insert the cable then gently ease the drive itself into place. Again, the drive needs to be fixed in place with two small screws, a pair placed on each side of the drive. If should also be noted that the smaller floppy disk drive fits into the 3.5" drive bay, the same bay that the hard disk drives also fit into (see below).

The image on the left shows the fixing screws for the floppy disk drive in situ. Again, there are two to a side that fix the drive in place, holding the drive securely and again reducing vibration and thus noise.

Hard drives are inserted in the middle of the case (they are not fed in from the outside as for DVD/CD drives and floppy drives). You can see that there are flaps of metal protruding into the centre of the bay. The drives actually sit on top of this and are held in place there.

The enclosure itself is 3.5" in width, precisely the same width as a standard hard drive, so the drives themselves fit snugly into the housings. The topmost housings, as they are meant for external drives fit all the way back to the back plate of the case. However, the lower slots do not extend nearly as far, as you will see below.

The image above shows the front view (left) and back view (top right) of the standard IDE hard drive. This is a type of drive that most people will have as a legacy drive (just as I did). From the back of the drive you can see that it's fairly simple with only three slots. The first of these is the slot for an ATA cable (which is the same as that for the DVD drive above). The central slot is for the jumpers (in my case the drive is set as the primary master for IDE slot 1. Finally we have the power cable on the extreme right hand side of the drive. The only preparation to be done for this drive, therefore, is to attach the IDE cable to id. This can only be atached one way because of the notch in the housing.

Actually getting the hard drive into the appropriate bay is simplicity itself. Simply grab the drive by the front edge and ease into the bay. The only thing to ensure is that the drive actually slips into place properly and rides properly on top of the two flanges.

Once the drive is seated properly it's now possible to line-up the screw holes in the drive itself with the corresponding screw holes in the housing. This time, as it's a purely internal dive you'll need to use the wider screws to attach the drive to the chassis.

With the hard drive in place it's now a simple matter of attaching the drive to the drive bay via screws. As the hard drive is in heavy use (and the drive spins very quickly) it's important to secure it properly with four screws as this could otherwise become a major source of noise.

Though the SATA (Serial ATA) hard dirve is the same size as the ordinary IDE hard drive, and looks the same form the front (above, left), it is actually quite different when viewed from the rear. On the left hand side there are tow slim connencors: the first for power and the second for data, then we have the drive setting connector (which should be set to primary as currently only one drive is allowed on each SATA connector). Then we have standard drive power connectors. To connect drive cables it's simply a matter of attaching the power cable and the data cable (these are of different sizes and designed in such a way that they will only fit one way).

Again, inserting the SATA drive is simply a matter of pushing it into place. As with the IDE hard drive this is a simple process as long as the drive sits properly in its housing. The only difficulty encountered in this case was that, being one of the lower drive bays, the drive would not fit as far into the housing as some of the other dirves. It balanced a little bit precariously in its housing and had to be fixed quickly to maintain its position.

Looking at the drive attached in position above you can see that almost a third of the drive's length protrudes from the housing, meaning that it's positioned much less far back than the IDE drive attached above it. This is not a problem, as far as it goes, but it does mean that the drive needs to be screwed in firmly to secure it properly in place and reduce vibration to a minimum.

With this done, the all the drives are now properly housed and it's now a questoin of attaching the power cables to the drives and attaching them to the motherboard.

Now for a little tip. After installing your drives you'll have noticed that the inside of your PC now resembles little more than a spaghetti tangle of power and data cables which are hanging all over the place and doing little more than getting in the way. I find that if I stuff the data cables and then the power cables in a free 5.25" bay (as in the image on the left here) they're no longer in the way and I have far more room to play with. This way I can start with the topmost drives and work my way down. Each drive I come to then has clear access and it's much easier to work with.

At this stage we should probably have a brief look at the case's wiring loom. These are all the cables and connectors that emerge from the back of the case's power supply. It is these that feed into and provide power for the CPU the motherboard and all the internal drives. Though it may look daunting and complicated there are only a small number of connectors here. The most important types are numbered on the diagram on the left and include: 1, the power supply to the motherboard; 2. the power supply to the floppy disk drive (this is the smallest connector and there are usually two); 3. the IDE derive power supply (there are a number of these, up to eight, depending on the power supply); 4, the power supply to the main CPU.

You will already have encountered the motherboard and CPU power cables in the previous section and below we'll be dealing with the power cables that connect to the internal drives.

The top image (above) shows the DVD drive with the IDE cable attached. The plug for the power cable is indicated by a red box. The corresponding power plug is show in the bottom left image (above). This is the commonest power adaptor in the power loom (number 3 above) and you should not have any problem locating it. As you can see, the upper surface of the IDE drive power cable is curved and the lower surface is square so you can only insert it into the drive one way. When plugged in it will look like the image on the bottom right (above). Attaching the power cable to any IDE drive is as simple as this!

After attaching the power cable the next step is to attach the data cables from the back of the ATA drives to the motherboard. This is done by the ATA headers (topmost image) which on my motherboard were located by the sockets for the memory modules. There are generally two IDE headers a primary IDE header (blue in the image) and a secondary IDE header (black). I'll be connecting my hard drive to the primary IDE header and the DVD drive to the secondary IDE header. You should just be able to notice a small white triangle by the left hand side of the header. This indicates Pin-1 of the IDE connector to which the red-coloured ribbon on a drive's IDE cable should be aligned. Modern IDE cables come with a little protrusion on their upper surface (see above). This protrusion extends beyond the notch in the IDE header on the motherboard and ensures that the IDE cable can only be inserted one way. The centre image, left, shows the headers with the secondary IDE cable (from the DVD drive inserted). Whilst the bottom image shows both IDE cables (from DVD and hard disk drive inserted into their housings).

As well as the IDE and power cables the DVD drive also comes with an audio connector that needs to be plugged into the motherboard so that the audio from the DVD/CD can be relayed via the motherboard. Most modern motherboards come with two audio plugs, one for the CD/DVD and one auxiliary port (as shown on the left).

Installation is simply a matter of plugging the cable into the appropraite socket, as many of these audio cables can be plugged both ways round make sure that you match the left and right audio channels in the correct orientation on the plug.

The inset image, left, shows the power plug for the floppy disk drive (the smallest on the case's power loom). This fits into a corresponding socket near the middle of the floppy disk drive's back and it's no problem plugging it in as it will only fit one way (though it is a little fiddly to install). The pins on the floppy disk drive's power socket are a bit thin and fiddly though, be careful when slotting the power cable home.

One point to note is that, as shown in the image on the left, the DVD drive and the floppy disk drive are both sharing a single power cable. This is not a problem as the connectors are wired in parallel, so you will not notice any kind of drop-off in performance. This also preserves additional power cables to add more preipherals and it was the main reason to place the DVD and floppy disk drives as close together within within their mountings as possible.

Once the floppy disk drive has been connected to the motherboard's power system it needs to be connected to an appropraite header on the motherboard for data transfer. The floppy drive is an IDE drive, but an onlder technology than modern hard drives or DVD drives, as such its IDE header is smaller than that for either of those drives (18 pins in fact). On modern motherboards this floppy drive header is usually located on an outer edge of the motherboard and looks very much like a standard IDE header, except that it's shorter (left, top). Most of the most modern floppy drives come with a directional cable (that has a little nub on the top) so that it can only be inserted one way. If you have an older drive with a cable that can be inserted into the header either way make sure that the red cable is pluggged in nearest to the pin labelled '1' on the header. (It's the leftmost pin on the image to the left).

The image on the left shows the power (leftmost) and data (rightmost) cables attached to the back of the SATA hard drive. On the latest motherboards both power and data cables attach to corresponding headers on the motherboard itself. However, in my case I had a SATA to standard power cable adapter, as you will see below.

The images to the left show the power socket adaptor which terminates the SATA power cable (left, top left). This matches the standard power cable from the case's power loom (left, top right).

As you can see from the images, both socket adaptor and plug fit together easily (and can only fit one way). The plug simply fits into the adaptor with the male and female connectors marrying with one another. When completed you will have a power junction, as shown in the botton image on the left.

The final part of the process of inserting internal drives is to attach the SATA drive's data cable to the motherboard. Usually there are a pair of SATA (Serial ATA) headers on the motherboard and they should look like the examples (left, top left) and are usually labelled SATA1 and SATA2. SATA1 should be used for your primary drive and SATA2 for your secondary. Unlike IDE you can only attach a single drive per SATA channel, but with disk drives now reaching 500Gb this shouldn't be limiting. You will also notice that the header is slightly L-shaped. This is matched by an L-shaped insert in the plug which means that the plug and header will only match one way. Simply take the SATA data cable (top right image on the left) and plug it into the SATA header as shown in the bottom image. And that's it!