Replacing internal floppy with new HD

[Kravage]

Hello,

I currently have an internal 40gig hard drive nearing capacity.  Since I don't have any additional bays, I was thinking I could replace the floppy drive (that I never use) with a new 120+ internal hard drive.  Would anyone happen to know where I can find instructions on carrying out this procedure?  I have pretty decent experience in software-side computing, but in terms of hardware installation it's limited to RAM/PCI installation.  Thanks for any help.  

[MalikTous]

I'd leave the floppy in, and use aluminium strips cut from an empty soda can to build brackets to extend the hard drive cage to take another HD. Soda can aluminium cuts and shapes with simple tools like old scissors and common paper punches.

Well, I still use the floppy...

If you really want to discontinue the floppy, you can remove it and its data cable physically, then go into BIOS and change the entry for floppy in the Standard CMOS settings page to NONE. Then in the Advanced settings (may be in Boot, may be in any of several other places, you will have to look for them) change the Boot order to exclude the floppy entirely and change 'Report no floppy to Win9x' to 'Yes'.

[Kravage]

Isn't that bad for your case/harddrive?  I can't imagine aluminum exactly being good for conductivity...wouldn't it also rot after a while?

[MalikTous]

As long as you leave enough space between the bottom of the existing HD cage and the added hard drive for ventillation, it's no problem. You basically make brackets to strap the second drive under the first with about 5 to 10 mm space between the added drive and the cage frame or drive bottom. You need only pay attention to possible interference with existing installed equipment (cards, speaker, front intake fan, etc.) The metal is conductive and capable of grounding the drive frame well.

Rinse the metal off to avoid any sticky soda deposits in the system. Aluminium is quite corrosion resistant, and convenient for this task. If you wish something stronger than comon soda cans, use aluminium roofing flashing material or (if you can get it) 0.3mm newsplate, the material used for offset printing of newspapers. You can also use light sheet steel, but shaping it is less convenient.

[merlin_2]

what mobo have you got?are we talking of daisy chaining them?what dont you treat your self to a cd/rw drive and save data to disk  cd/rw cd /dvd ram  etc in case of h/d failure?