Step 2-G: How to Install the Hard Drive in Your Computer.

The hard drive serves as the long term memory and data storage device in your computer. You can have more than one hard drive in your computer. The one I recommend has a huge storage capacity to make sure you have space for all your programs, photos, videos and music.
If you haven't done so already, you will need to Order Your Hard Drive .

All hard drives look pretty much the same. The differences are inside so you can't really distinguish one hard drive from another just by looking at it.
It is a bit tricky to give instructions for installing the disk drives. You have three types of disk drives in your computer: the hard drive, the floppy drive and the optical CD/DVD drive. They are all installed in a very similar fashion. The problem is that the procedures are a little different for every computer case. To solve this problem I will give instructions geared specifically for the case I recommended and I will also give generic instructions that apply to most standard cases.
In most cases you will see a number of 5.25 inch drive bays in the upper front and a number of 3.5 inch bays in the lower front. CD/DVD drives are 5.25 inch, while hard drives and floppy drives are 3.5 inch.
For the CoolerMaster CM690 I recommend you review your case's manual on pages 6-8. They have a pretty good set of pictures that show the process of installing the drives clearly. You first will need to remove the front panel. Then remove the top 3.5 inch tray by pulling it out the side of the bay. Place the hard drive into the tray and put the tray back into the bay with the plugs facing toward the interior of the case. We chose the top bay because that one is least likely to interfere with airflow coming from the fan in the front panel.
For other cases you generally slide the drive into the bay from the back and then hold it in place using four screws.
Once the drive is firmly seated in the drive bay you can plug a SATA power cable from the power supply into the plug on the back of the hard drive.
Next you will insert one end of a SATA cable provided in the motherboard box into the plug on the back of the hard drive. Insert the other end into the red SATA1 socket in the lower right area of the motherboard.
Note: If you are installing an IDE hard drive instead of the SATA model I recommended, you will need to use an IDE cable that looks like a wide ribbon. Plug the blue end into the blue IDE socket in the upper right of your motherboard. Then plug the other end into your hard drive. Make sure the jumper on the back of the drive is set to Master (the jumper is not used in SATA drives). To connect the IDE hard drive to the power supply you will use one of the straight 4-pin leads.

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