I am trying to fit a third hard drive into the floppy drive bay in my Dell Dimension 2400. After removing the FDD (which I no longer need), I find the existing 3.5" bracket's screw holes are about 1mm too low to screw in the new HDD - but otherwise the drive fits perfectly into the bracket. Short of drilling bigger holes (which I can't do), what is the best way of securing the drive into place inside the bracket?

Alternatively, where/how else could I fit the new drive? The Dimension 2400 came with the original HDD mounted vertically in the bottom front; two 5.25" horizontal bays at the top - I have an optical drive in the top bay, a second HDD in the second (I had no problem using a simple cheap bracket to convert the 5.25 to a 3.5); then the FDD.

Any help greatly appreciated!

M.

I have repaired quite a few of those machines.

As to screws there is really no need for them. If you get vibration create a wedge of some sort. A bit of plastic etc.

As to functionality I would be very interested in the result.

In my experience the IDE Primary is only single channel where as the IDE Secondary is dual but was only intended for CD/DVD drives.

If you can run two hard drives off the Primary I know a few people that will be thanking you through me.

You can use an external enclosure to turn one of the hard drives into an external drive. You will have to filter the results according to the connection type (IDE or sata). If you have an IDE drive make sure the jumper on it is set to master.

Thanks - I ended up taping the new drive into the floppy bay with electrical tape! Hoping there's no scary surprises further down the line..!

Originally Posted by jephree

I have repaired quite a few of those machines.

As to screws there is really no need for them. If you get vibration create a wedge of some sort. A bit of plastic etc.

As to functionality I would be very interested in the result.

In my experience the IDE Primary is only single channel where as the IDE Secondary is dual but was only intended for CD/DVD drives.

If you can run two hard drives off the Primary I know a few people that will be thanking you through me.

Sorry, the new (third) HDD I put in is a SATA, so I didn't have that problem - I got a SATA host controller PCI card, and an adaptor for the floppy power cable. I've been backing up stuff to the new drive for the last few hours, everything seems to be functioning A-OK.

(the second HDD I put in a few years ago is an IDE, and it's running no probs on the secondary IDE channel, alongside the CD/DVD drive.)

Cool. Thanks for the info.