best setup for a 2nd hard drive?

[fearn]

I am buying a new 7200 rpm 46 gig hard drive for my 'puter. I will be performing a clean install of windows me (I know, I know let's not debate whether or not ME s*cks please) My question is how do I do this. I plan to leave my 10 gig 5400 in my system. I will also be getting a cd burner to go along with my cd rom. I assume from all the reading I've done I will want to have the 7200 as the master on the primary IDE and the 5400 as the slave. Then the cd burner and cd rom on the secondary IDE. How do I set up the system using fdisk (I've done some reading, but no actual experience) Will my old (5400) hard drive be the C drive or can I select that in fdisk? Can I just place the slave cable on the old drive and have it be the slave? Will it still be C:? I guess what I need to know is what determines a drives designator, and once a drive is c: is it always the one or can I designate the faster drive as C since it will contain my OS?

800 P3 @944
DFI Pa61 mobo
Vodoo 4
256M pc133

 

[KotchY]

I Would Set it up as follows..
46gbhd/Burner on Chan 0
older hd/cd-rom on 1

I would think that the older hd is not up to speed witht eh newwer, Is the new one ATA/100 or 66, what does your motherboard support?

 

[fearn]

Mobo will only support ATA 66 BTW what do you mean by Chan 0 and 1? Similar to primary/secondary?

 

[bigguy1]

OK here is the deal.

The drive designator "C,D,E,etc" is done by Dos/9x The active (boot) drive will always be "C".

When you Fdisk your "New"(Primary Master) drive I would creat a primary DOS partition, I would make it say 5GB in size, but you could make it the full size of the drive if you want but defrag will take you for ever, and make it "Active" bootable. This will be "C" drive where you will install your OS (win98 me)

I would make the remainder of the drive an Extended DOS partition. Then create Logical Dos partitions within that drive any size you want to use up the drive and they will become, "D,E,F'etc".

As for your old (Secondary Slave) drive it will still be set active so you have to delete all partitions on it,Note: this will delete any data on the drive, then create an Extended Dos partition for the whole drive. Then create Logical Dos Partitions in that drive and they will follow in order from the other drive letters on the first drive, say if you had 3 partitions on the first drive"C,D,E" then the first partition on the 2nd(old) drive will be "F" and so on depending how many Logical partitions you create on that drive.

Your drive letters for your CDROM, and Burner will change to fall in line with the last letter assigned to the last Logical drive on your second hard drive.


I hope that I did not confuse you too much!

Bigguy1

 

[LXi]

I would put the CD-ROM and CD-RW on different channels, because its better for CD to CD copy.

 

[fearn]

I am a bit confused, are we mixing terms? I thought this was the setup. I have 2 ide controllers on my mobo: Primary and Secondary. Out of each of these was a cable with two connectors One is Master the other Slave. Is this correct or am I messed up? Please correct me if I am mistaken and clarify using the correct terms which drive would go where. Thanks and sorry for the possibly simplistic question.

 

[LXi]

The master slave is set with jumpers on your IDE device, not on your cable. If you're on ATA33, it doesnt matter which connector you use. If you're on ATA66/100, then the middle(grey) connector is slave, and the end(black) connector is master.

What I meant by "channel", is the same thing as controller. You should put your CD-ROM and your CD-RW, one on primary, the other on secondary.

 

[fearn]

Thanks for the reply LXi. What did you mean earlier by seperate channels for the CD rom and Cd-Rw?

 

[fearn]

Bigguy1, you stated that my old hard drive (5400) "will still be set active so you have to delete all partitions on it" Can I transfer some of the data on it to the new one first or do I have to fdisk it up front?

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

He meant put the burner on the primary IDE channel (or controller if you will) and the CD-drom on the secondary channel (or controller).

 

[fearn]

Knightbreed, I assume you mean both cd rom and cd rw would be on each of the Slave connectors of their respective ide controller? Is this correct? Hard drives would be the masters?

 

[bigguy1]

Fearn
Before you install the new hard drive you can transfer all the data to another drive or ghost it or use a program that usually comes with the new drives like maxiblast. There should be some directions with the drive or you can go to the drive site and they will have the program and directions on how to transfer the data.

Bigguy1

 

[LXi]

<<I assume you mean both cd rom and cd rw would be on each of the Slave connectors of their respective ide controller? Is this correct? Hard drives would be the masters?>>

Your booting hard drive has to be primary master, so either your CD-ROM or CD-RW has to be primary slave, but it doesnt matter on the secondary.

 

[MSNY]

Many of the terms are interchangable. But there are three ways to look at it.
1) What DOS says when you setup your drive
2) What Windows says when you boot your system
3) Hardware setup, how the devices are pluged into your system

1) Under DOS you have to FDISK the drive to a Primary partition which becomes drive 0 (zero)
This becomes your boot drive 2)as in what windows says is the C: drive. To further complicate matters you can subdivide drive 0 into logical partitions which 2) windows will designate as drive D:, E:, F: ect.

So the short answer here is that under DOS FDISK Primary Drive 0 (zero) will be Windows drive C:
on boot up ie. your &quot;boot drive&quot;. All other drives attached will work with the &quot;boot drive&quot; configuration.

3) Hardware wise you MUST plug the &quot;boot drive&quot; into the Primary controller of the motherboard usually designated as 0 (zero) stamped on the board. The cable plug to the hard drive can be either one it does not matter. Both the Primary 0 (zero) and secondary (1) controllers can have 2 devices per controller as in Master/Slave. Also make sure you have set the jumpers properly for master/slave properly for each device. So, you can have a total of 4 devices, 2 on each controller as master/slave.

I have 2 hard drives with a CDROM and a CDRRW. It is advisiable to but the them on seperate controller. My setup is as follows as an example:
C: boot drive, drive 0 (zero), hardware controller 0 (zero), master
D: logical of drive 0 (zero), master
E: logical of drive 0 (zero), master
F: second drive, drive 1, hardware controller 1, master
G: Zip disk
Y: CDR-RW, drive 1, slave
Z: CDROM, drive 0, slave

Hope this answers your question regarding master/slave and controllers.
(I forced the Y: and Z: drive letter designation in DOS and Windows, but you don't have to)

Another thing, Partition Magic makes this very easy to perform without DOS and shows you a picture of just how your drives are setup. I reccomend it.

My System specs

 

[fearn]

Msny, thanks that cleared things up for me. By the way I do want to force cdrom and cdrw to the end of the alphabet so if in the future I add more hardware I won't keep changing their designations. How do you accomplish this. I am new to all this techie stuff but learning quickly thanks to you guys. Some would say I know enough to be dangerous, but I enjoy the tweaking and haven't screwed anything up major....yet.

 

[MSNY]

Fearn -

To force the CD drives there are two steps:
1) Create a config.sys file if you don't have one and enter this one line in it.
LASTDRIVE=Z
This will tell DOS my last drive in the system.

2) In windows right click on my computer and select properties, then the device manager tab. You should have a CDROM entry. Select it, then select properties and finally the settings tab. You will see 2 boxes called &quot;reserved drive letters&quot; make both the start and end letters Z:. This will tell windows I want my CDROM to be Z: and not to change if I change other drive settings. If you have a CDR-RW do the same thing in windows as in drive Y: or whatever.

Reboot the computer and your drive letters are changed. I also editied my previous post again to clarify the setup for clarity. You may want to look at it again. All this assumes you have loaded windows on your system first.

Hope this helps.

 

[fearn]

MSNY, thanks for the clarification. Just switched my cdrom to Z: It worked just as you described thanks. I have a copy of partition magic on cd but it is a two year old version and it isn't currently installed on my machine. Would you recommend using it then to transfer the needed files from my old drive to the new 7200 one? I assume I would go through the fdisk stuff first to format the new drive, move the cables around as needed then use partition magic to transfer needed files, then fdisk the old hard drive wiping it clean and readying it to receive whatever files I want to keep off of my 7200?

 

[fearn]

Is this thread dead now? I did get quite a bit of info on the hard drive upgrade project, thanks to all the replied and if any additional info is out there, feel free to add to this thread. Thanks again!

 

[MSNY]

I used Partition Magic 4.0 last May and used the &quot;copy&quot; function to transfer data from 2 drives into my current 30 gig drive. WARNING: This is tricky and not for the faint of heart. Dig up the manual if you want to try it for reference. What you have to do is create the partition on the new drive first and MAKE sure you have enough free space for the copy first. If you do not do this then the &quot;copy&quot; function is greyed out and disabled. It also means physically swapping the drives in your case making the new drive a slave first, then copy, then making it a master drive.
Also if there are problems make sure you have a boot disk floppy available so you can start over. Make Partition Magic boot disk that can be used from DOS for this. Good luck !

 

[Turbopit]

Assuming we're talking IBM here, if retail then their will be excellent instructions for adding the new drive included in the box. I just installed mine a couple days ago.

 

[MSNY]

Well, for a newbie the instructions are daunting. &quot;geek&quot; speak needs to be in plain English and the manuals usually don't help if you run into problems...hence this forum works nicely.

 

[Turbopit]

I've never added a hard drive before and had no problems. I wouldn't call myself a newbie, but I didn't see anything in the instructions that most people who are even considering doing their own upgrades wouldn't understand. There are lots of pictures and screen shots. They really hold your hand for you. They have a whole new set of instructions for each possible set up. As far as instrructions go, these are some of the best I have seen in a product.

but yes, thses forums are great!