Installing an internal HD

Hey can anyone help, I got a new 500GB internal hard drive but am having trouble plugging it in, im not very good at hardware stuff!

At the moment I have a CDR, DVD, 40GB HD and the secondary slave is free.

So I opened the computer up, slid the HD in the slot, and tried changing the jumper switches to various combinations listed, but didnt know which one because none were called secondary slave.

Did I plug it in right and all?  I got that long ribbon that goes into the 40gb HD, and then continues on and I plugged it in the 500gb, i couldnt see any other cable.

I tried putting the jumpers on cable select as well but no luck, any clues?

Yes, if you have 2 HDs, the one that boots the computer will be your master and the other one the slave.

You said you tap into the ribbon of the old HD, that's fine, but carefull as your new HD will be much faster then the old one and since you are using it's ribbon you are effectively reducing the speed of the new HD to work as fast [read/write - push/pull] as your old one.

Motherboards usualy come with 2 IDE slots on them, you could use the 2nd slot for you new HD, but you probably are using it for your CDR, DVD etc.

If I were you, I would bin the old 40 GB HD, and keep only 1 drive, you save power, problems and noise, but you'll have to install Windows on the new drive.

you dont have to re-install anything, just use something like norton ghost to take the *complete* contents of the smaller drive onto te larger one...