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My PC has two drives with ...

enter image description here

... braided cable B1 comes from the motherboard,

and then there appears to be a "jumper" B2 on to the second drive.

Then, each drive has it's own independent, normal, flat cable F1 and F2.

  1. Which is power and which data?

In fact I want to simply throw away the blueplatter drive (ie, I want the machine to have only one drive, the green one).

  1. Is it perfectly OK to simply disconnect B2 and F2, to throw away the blue drive?

  2. So, it's perfectly ok to just leave the "jumper" B2 dangling? (It doesn't need, who knows, a terminator or such?)

Feel free to file this under "questions from Mac idiots"; I have not seen such a "jumper" before on my limited time inside PCs. As you know on Macs there is, uh, less access to the drives :)

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    Feel free to file this under "questions from Mac idiots"; I have not seen such a "jumper" before on my limited time inside PCs. As you know on Macs there is, uh, less access to the drives :)
    – Fattie
    Nov 28, 2020 at 19:29
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    I'm going to drop your comment into the question, otherwise my answer's opening statement sounds like I 'don't like PCs' which is not really the case. ;)
    – Tetsujin
    Nov 28, 2020 at 19:41
  • Thanks all - I only wish I had enough points to give every answer a bounty - THANKS
    – Fattie
    Dec 14, 2020 at 18:34

3 Answers 3

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If you're coming from a Mac world, then you'll quickly find generic PCs are full of this kind of loose cabling. They have no real coherent design principal, because they have no coherent single design team. Learn to live with it ;)

B1 to B2 is a parallel power cable, coming from your computer's power supply. The power supply is capable of powering two (or more) devices from a single source.
Your house's mains wiring does just the same thing. A double socket on your living room wall works on exactly the same principal.

F1 & F2 are distinct data connectors. These cannot be paralleled. Each is married to a separate slot on your motherboard, which recognises which is which.

Disconnecting either cable from a single drive will prevent the drive from working, whist doing no damage whatsoever to the other drive or the computer. If you disconnect both B2 & F2, then you'd remove the other end of F2 just to be tidy. It doesn't make any practical difference to leave it in place. B2 can 'just dangle'.

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+50

B is the SATA power cable. It powers the drive and provides some control over it, but doesn't carry data.

F are SATA cables. They are used for data transfers, but can't power the drive.

As @Tetsujin said in his answer, any of these can be disconnected to disable that particular drive without affecting the rest of the system.

On a side note, SATA power cables (B) typically come from the power supply, not motherboard. This may change in the next few years though, because with the new ATX12VO standard voltages other than 12V are produced by the motherboard rather than the PSU. SATA power carries +12V, +5V and +3.3V so an ATX12VO PSU can't provide these.

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Look inside your case. There will be 2 cables going to the drive already there. On will go from the motherboard to the drive, this will be the data (SATA) cable. There are normally several. Using a SATA cable, make the motherboard/drive connection. The cables are keyed, so you can only insert them one way. Again, looking at your existing drive, the other lead is the power lead. On the cables coming from your power supply, you should find one that matches the port in your drive. It is similar to the dta cable, but a little longer. Again it is keyed. Plug it in and you are good to go.

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  • There are normally several SATA cables going from the motherboard the hard drive? No, there is normally one SATA going to each of the drives. In many computers this means one, in some it means 2, and in a very small number it means more. I assume you didn't intend for this unspecific meaning, but you'll want to edit your answer to make it more clear and specific. However, please note that the question has already been answered, with good and clear answers. Unless your answer is going to be superior in some way, it can be less than helpful to add more answers.
    – music2myear
    Dec 15, 2020 at 4:45

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