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What to do with 2nd hard disk?

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I just installed a new 40Gig HD and kept my old 9Gig doody installed. The question is, what do I do with the old one? Is it safe to delete like crazy, just reformat? If I reformat, I need to reinstall windows back onto it, right? Right now, both HD's are identical and the new one is master, while the old one is slave.

I plan on just using the old drive for extra storage, but I'll run software off the new one. What have others done in this situation?

TIA.
 
You can just format the old one. Also, if your going to leave it installed on your current machine, you don't need to install windows after you format it. In fact I wouldn't recommend it since last time I hooked up 2 HD's to my computer with windows on both of them, it screwed up both windows installations. I recommend you format the HD via a floppy disk in ms-dos. Make a startup disk in windows and add format.exe if it's not already included. Then boot your computer from that floppy and format it.

When I got a new HD, I relegated my old HD to being a backup. One thing I did differently from you though, is that I don't leave it connected to my computer. It sits one of my drawers. Every few weeks, I'll connect it to my computer and backup any new important stuff and then put it back in the drawer.
 


<< You can just format the old one. Also, if your going to leave it installed on your current machine, you don't need to install windows after you format it. In fact I wouldn't recommend it since last time I hooked up 2 HD's to my computer with windows on both of them, it screwed up both windows installations. I recommend you format the HD via a floppy disk in ms-dos. Make a startup disk in windows and add format.exe if it's not already included. Then boot your computer from that floppy and format it.

When I got a new HD, I relegated my old HD to being a backup. One thing I did differently from you though, is that I don't leave it connected to my computer. It sits one of my drawers. Every few weeks, I'll connect it to my computer and backup any new important stuff and then put it back in the drawer. >>



Thanks for the help. 🙂

I'm losing you wrt the formatting. Right now, both are running Win 98SE and everything's cool. You mean I should reformat the old one and not reinstall windows on it? Will it be usable then?

I could do the drawer thing but I think I'll keep it in place for now while I have everything working smoothely 🙂
 
really if everything is running fine you dont need to format it or anything just keep the 9gig as your OS and 40gig as storage why format and reinstall windows if theres nothing wrong
 


<< really if everything is running fine you dont need to format it or anything just keep the 9gig as your OS and 40gig as storage why format and reinstall windows if theres nothing wrong >>



Wouldn't that be kind of a waste? Buy a new quiet fast HD and use it for backup while working on the old noisy slow HD? The reason I was asking about reformatting is because the old drive is almost full and I'd like to clean it out if I'm gonna use it for storage. Is there a better way? Just delete all non-essential stuff from it?

Thanks.
 


<< I just installed a new 40Gig HD and kept my old 9Gig doody installed. The question is, what do I do with the old one? Is it safe to delete like crazy, just reformat? If I reformat, I need to reinstall windows back onto it, right? Right now, both HD's are identical and the new one is master, while the old one is slave.

I plan on just using the old drive for extra storage, but I'll run software off the new one. What have others done in this situation?

TIA. >>



First, you should partition and format your new hard drive to your like. Your C: partition needs to be at least size of your old hard drive. I'd say two 20GB partition is pretty good.

Using Ghost or other similar program, make a mirror copy of your bootup partition onto your new HDD. You're ready to boot from your new hard drive. Set it as active partition in Fdisk, set it as primary master and you can boot exactly like your old drive.

 
You could set the 40gig as the bootable and format and install windows on that. Then after you get it it installed move all your important crap over to your new hard drive, and format the 9 gigs in windows.

 
I didn't have any problems either until I shutdown my machine and disconnected the other hard drive. After that, when I tried to boot windows, I got a bunch of VxD errors. I disconnected my new HD and plugged the old one back in to try to boot windows from that one and I got the same errors.

As for your other question, if you format your original HD, you will still be able to use it in windows. You only need 1 hd with windows installed on it.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I've already copied the old drive drive onto the new one. The new one is C, the old one D. The system already boots from the new HD and I have booted with the old one unplugged with no problems.

What I really want to know is:

Does reformatting the old drive erase Windows on it? I just want an easy way to make some room on it (right now, 8 of 9Gigs are used up). Is the best way to reformat or to just start deleting non-essentials?

Thanks 🙂
 
A format will give you a nice squeeky clean start. Right click on the drive letter D: and pick Format...
No need to transfer system files either.
 
I would use the old drive as a ghost drive
you can ghost quite a bit on the 9G drive 🙂

I think ghost compress like 50% or so, so you can get atleast 18G of info on the old drive...

oh..and store the drive in a secure location..it will save u when ur 40G crash 🙂

 
For the record, you can just format(wipes totally clean) your 9GB drive and not install an OS. You can use the entire drive as a "floppy", just drag and drop. I wouldn't even use the 9GB until the 2 20GB partitions are full.

Most don't like 40GB partitions cause it takes 2 moons to defrag 'em. I would cut that bad boy in half. (also, unless your gonna be using NTFS you can't use over 32GB anyway.

Toss Linux on the 9GB and fiddle w/it.(my choice)
 


<< also, unless your gonna be using NTFS you can't use over 32GB anyway. >>



I have a 40gb HD using FAT32 and in windows it sees the full 40GB
 
Hmmm, thanks for the partitioning idea. What exactly does it mean once I partition it into 2? The 2 partitions act exactly as 2 separate drives with separate letters? How do I know which one remains C?

What exactly is a ghost drive?

Sorry for the 100000 questions, just trying to set things right. 🙂

Thanks.
 
Hook it up boot up and right click and format -quick--simple add a ghost of your c:/mp3//rcpts/etc ,backupyour files as needed, Just like having 15 cdr's in one place
 
partition----you can use partition magc to make say 2-20 gig partitions.
Ghost is a ecxact copy of your OS {image} and you can restore your OS to an exact duplicat for your fresh install of OS. If you partition the drive ghost will make exact copies of all of the partitions, and if restored you will lose any data stored after making the image. 40 gigs is not that much space anymore if you install any games. If not split it in half you probaly wont even use 6 gigs



Norton Ghost--You have to purchase the software, or if u are lucky like me, it came with my motherboard
 
The easist way would be to C: new drive 1 partition
D/old drive 1 partition

That is the way I do all of mine, I can baack up my data and not worry about losing it. Defrag at night when i go to sleep
 
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