I have Dell Dim2100 'XP' with Western Digital Hard Drive + 384Mb RAM. I have a Maxtor 19Gb Hard Drive from my earlier '98SE' which I want to use as Back-up/Storage, preferably internally but can't get it to locate as a secodary Drive using the IDE connection cable - is the solution an IDE/USB 2.0 adapter (if available)... :)

Did you set the jumpers correctly?

For a basic example of jumpers, try a Google image search for hard drive jumpers. The settings are different for different models and brands. You'll need to know the model for your drive.

The model number for the drive should be printed on top of it. Also, you can usually get the model number of the drive from within device manager once it's installed. Once you know the model number, you can go to Maxtor's website to find out the jumper settings by selecting your model from their product index. The jumper settings are frequently printed on the drive as well. I bet you can do something very similar for the Western Digital drive at WD's website. You'll probably want to set the WD as master, and the Maxtor as slave on the primary IDE channel. If you have any optical drives (CDRW, CD-ROM, DVD, etc.), you should probably put those on the secondary IDE channel. Some systems, like OEM systems from Dell/HP/Emachines/etc may need to have the drives set to cable select instead of master/slave. I'd try master/slave first and if that doesn't work, then try CS.

You mentioned an IDE/USB converter. There are external enclosures that you can mount an IDE drive into and then connect it to a PC via USB. That's all that most of the large external hard drives are that you see in stores. If you were to open one, you'd find a standard 3.5" IDE hard drive inside most of the time. The enclosures range in price from around $10 to whatever you want to pay. Here's some at Newegg.com.

Hi, My name is Don.

I have a relatively old system: Compaq Deskpro, Pent III, 550MHz, 196 SDRAM, WinME...
I can't see the 2nd drive (but Bios does), I have sacrificed the CD-Rom for another disk drive. The boot HD is on its' own IDE cord and I've just plugged the cord that was connected to the CD into the 2nd HD. Windows updated the info but WinME does not show it on "My Computer"..? What needs to happen? Thanks for the input! Deejay