My computer has 2nd bay for a hard drive, but only two sata connections on the MB, and one goes to a dvd drive.I rarely ever use the dvd drive and would rather put another hard drive in for storage and backup.
Would the computer automatically see and utilize the 2nd hard drive, or is it not that simple, and could I damage the MB?
Yes you can use the cable from your DVD drive for a HDD.
Only caveat is the cable to the ODD may not support the full data transfer speed of the HDD. ODDs are somewhat slower in that respect but for storage that may not be a big issue.
Interesting read:
Solved: Is the colour of SATA cables significant? - Dell Community
The article you linked to states that the color of the SATA cable means nothing. "Technically speaking, there is no difference and doesn't matter what color they are. The functionality remains the same for all of them."
This article confirms that a SATA cable is a SATA cable is a SATA cable:
SATA 3Gb/s vs. 6Gb/s Cable Performance (Revisited)
"Our results confirm that despite the faster hardware available today, there is still no performance difference between SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 6Gb/s cables."
Wow, that was easy, nothing shorted out, I didn't even have to do a complete reinstall. :)
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