Add IDE port in BIOS

Ruudjah · Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject: Add IDE port in BIOS

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, which supports 2 IDE channels with in total 4 ports. The primary IDO 0 is the bbuilt-in hard drive, the fixed optical is connected to secondary IDE0. Then, there is a multibay present. The multibay is connected to the IDE1 channel. In the multibay, you can put in an extra floppy drive, optical drive or hard drive.

So far, so good. I purchased an multibay hard drive adapter, so I can add an extra hard drive in the laptop. When I installed the hard drive in the multibay adapter, I noticed tht it is possible to put 2 hard drives physically into the multibay adapter. However, the BIOS of the dell Inspiron 8200 only supports 1 device on the IDE1 channel.

I really want to get this working. How awesome is it to have three hard drives into one laptop?! I see 2 solutions here:
-Let the OS detect the second hard drive in the multibay
-Change the BIOS, so the second hard drive would be supported.

Solution 1 is not applicable if you run windows (which i do). Linux should be possible, see for example NASlite.
Solution 2 is the best solution. but: how hard is it to hack the bios? Is it even possible? I guess I have to download the bios, then sort of decompile it, then search for the data i have to change, change it, and then try it out.

Arne.F · Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:57 am Post subject:

The bios should be no problem. Also other OS (Win95-XP) find IDE-harddisks that was on IDE ports that was not detected from the BIOS. The BIOS detection is only needed at boottime.

I have probs to find which you mean with secondary IDE0. Because IDE0 is always the Primary channel.

Please do a complete list which drive is connected to the ports.

If you have this connection there is no solution because the Primary IDE is not reachable from outside.

IDE0 - MASTER: Internal HDD
IDE0 - SLAVE: Nothing

IDE1 - MASTER: Internal CD
IDE1 - SLAVE: Multibay