Hard drive not compatible with dell 5150

robd831

Can someone help with this please.......
I have just bought and upgraded by old pc to a dell 5150 which was on the Grabbit board last week via BT Shop.
I wanted to put one of my "old" hard drives
(Seagate 160Gb Barracuda 7200.7) into the dell. However they have differrent conections. Not the four pin power plug and tape like conections (which I was expecting). It has two blue leads(power I think) and a seperate five cable with black red and orange (I think) coloures.It has not got and extention for the power cable or oher cables but does have a slot for a second drive.
Does anyone have any sugestions. Thanks in advance Rob

fguk

What you have is a Parallel hard disk that you want to put into a machine with only SATA connections. You can get converters, a quick google should dig up some reasonably priced ones. Other option, depending what you want to do with the older drive (long term) is buy an External housing for it, which should then give you a USB2 interface into your system.

CAT-THE-FIFTH

Perhaps the Dell has a SATA drive and yours is an IDE drive.

I think you can buy IDE to SATA converters off Ebay and some internet computer bits retailers.

robd831

Thanks I will look for converters, i did not know there were differrent types of hard drives

niceguyrichy

Is that a Dell laptop you're talking about, or a desktop? :think:

robd831

its a desktop, I also don't seem to have any spare conecters for power , is there a way of piggybacking off the original supply ?

niceguyrichy

robd831 wrote:

its a desktop, I also don't seem to have any spare conecters for power , is there a way of piggybacking off the original supply ?

yeah, you can easily get three way splitters, but I'm still confused by the hdd description. no chance of a piccy?

do any look like:


or:

robd831

I'm not much of a techie (too old I think) ut they look nothing like your pics, I wanted the connections like the lower picture (flat tape type) but inside the dell was what looked like a two cable (blue) ower type cable instead of the four pin type I wanted and a about a six coloured connecter (black red orange etc) not the flat cable you have shown above.
Can't send a picture as it is inside the computer I am now using !!!

niceguyrichy

any chance you could link me to a site with tech info about your new comp.

whenever I google it all comes up are lappy's.

Little_John

The new Dell PC's use sata drives, especially the dimension 5150 that I assume you have, They are a really minimal inside, and have dropped any of the older technology that some people still use Like IDE, LPT ports and serial ports, I dont think they even come with a floppy drive any more. but the price is pretty good.

Your old PC will have an IDE drive

This device will connect to your IDE drive and allow you to plug a sata cable in to it. this is a good solution if you intend to use the drive in the new pc all the time.

Try this one if you want to just use it as an ocasional drive.

Or you could turn it in to an external drive by buying an IDE drive enclosure

JimArnold

Just set up a SATA drive Dell a couple of weeks ago and put an old HDD in it to transfer bits

The Dell Machines didn't have any IDE cables but it did have two IDE connectors on the motherboard so just added a cable and it worked fine

and Yes you can get power splitters but I didn't need one