My first problems - need help please

[Smoke24]

If your hard drives are hooked up you need to find the place in bios for them to be detected. When it starts to boot you should see, press delete to enter setup, that's where you set your bios. It will give you several sections in a menu format, follow your mobo manual to change any settings that need changing. I only have Soyo boards running here and they have a section in bios for IDE HDD Auto detection. Let the bios detect the drives, you may as well install the CDROM before doing this as it needs detecting too. After that you either need a boot disk on floppy or set the bios to boot to CDROM and fdisk your drives and format them. You'll be ready to load Windows then.

[Tarmenion]

Thanks guys, I ended it last night with the booting going OK. I will continue when I get home later with putting the drives in and etc...

I am sure I will post a whole bunch of more questions later so if you see my name on this topic after this that means I have some more questions for you

[Tarmenion]

Ahhhh I got another question

Just curious what should I get as far as windows.

Shoud I get Windows 98se or 2000? Keep in mind the main purpose of my PC is for gaming.

thanks

[HAL9000]

I'm still a fan of my Windows ME, love it. Given the choice between 98 and 2K though, I would probably go 98. I can't justify the expense of 2K.

[Hosie]

Glad to hear ya like Windows ME Hal... I use it and love it! thought I was the only one here that had anything good to say about it. :-)

[Smoke24]

I have ME on the wife's machine and it runs OK so far but it crashes or locks up too much on mine. Don't know why. I had to go back to 98se. Never tried 2000 though due to cost.

[Tarmenion]

Ok, new question

1. I just installed the floppy, is there suppose to be a cable with it? plus no instructions. Also do I have to configure it or do anything?

Also I just found out that this Mobo has Jumpers and I am making sure they are all correct now.

Next is the HDD, from what I understand I have to configure it or something but I am not there yet, so until then.....

[HAL9000]

Floppy cable should have come with your motherboard. The end with the twist goes towards the floppy. Some floppy drives have pin1 AWAY from the power connector, so when you boot, if the floppy light stays on continuously, it's on backwards. The hard drive will most likely use an 80 wire Ultra66/100 cable. Blue connector goes to the motherboard, black to the hard drive. It will be autodetected by the motherboard.

[Tarmenion]

Ok, I am up to the HDD (I will worry about the Cables later )

Here is the deal, I have 2 IBM 40gig HDD.

How do I jump these?

I know make 1 master but what about the other? make it slave?

I want be able to use both say like save all my game material to 1 drive and everything else to the other or is this not the right way?

Ok I will keep hitting the refresh button now till a reply

[Tarmenion]

Opps forgot to mention

there is a what looks like a piece of tape on the copper stripe that runs from the circle to the board. do i remove this?

Also do I install the HDD right below the floppy drive?

and which is the right side up while iam at it? should the circle part be facing up or it doesnt matter?

I AM SUCH A NEWBIE ROFL

[PardeGT]

This is a little late in your post but I noticed you referred to me having the Antec case. I actually don't, when I was advising you on parts to buy and answering questions you had on the case I was getting information from web sites pertaining to the case. I also read where you decided on the Samsung monitor, great choice. There is also a Samsung manufacture rebate of $20 that you may be able to cash in on.

Looks like things are going well for you in your set-up!

[Tarmenion]

DOH I thought you purchased the case, misunderstanding.

And the Monitor cost me 350 with a 50 rebate

[PardeGT]

I'm not sure what you mean about the copper stripe. The hard drives can be configured into master and slave by the ribbon cable. The blue connector goes on the motherboard, the black plugs into the master and the gray is for the slave. Also, the hard drives are usually placed with the power connector to your right when looking at the back of the drive.

HTH

Oh, and yes most do put the hard drives below the floppy, but anywhere where they will fit is fine. They also make adapter plates that allow you to place it in an open 5.25 bay.

[Tarmenion]

Ok, I am getting alittle confuse butI guest I can fix this with alittle more reading.

In continuation from my last question what IDE connecter do I put it on?

I am getting really confuse on what IDE connecter I should use.

I have 2 HDD and 1 dvd/cdrom and 2 IDE connecters. which goes where?

[PardeGT]

Ah, this is a raid set-up, I forgot. Someone with raid experience will have to pitch in here.

[Tarmenion]

I dont want to use RAID? do I have to?

[DrZaius]

Tarmenion,

No, you don't want to use RAID, it is just a way too make 2 or more harddrives act like one (article here).

[PardeGT]

No, you don't. If you don't then plug the two hard drives in the IDE1 with 80 pin ribbon cable as I mentioned earlier and the cable will set the two as master and slave and then plg your dvd/cdrom into IDE2.

[Tarmenion]

I thought I was suppose to make both masters but of course I can now see I am wrong but can someone explain the way SLAVE and MASTER work?

I was under the imperession when I got 2 HDD that I would have TWO HDD's, I would use 1 for games and the other for misc. By making one master and one slave it this what I am doing or is there something else I have to do?

Also could answer this tape question? There is a copper type of stripe on the HDD from the circle part to the circuit board with a piece of tape holding it down (its like a cable with a little plug but really thin in copper with tape holding it down), am I suppose to remove this piece of tape? its on the 40gig IBM's

[Smoke24]

I'm not exactly sure how to tell you to do it but why not set it up for RAID 0 and partition the drives to act like two, have a C and a D with Raid 0 on both. You then will get the benefit of the speed of RAID and have separate partitions for the way you want to use them. You might even want to make three partitions and have a smaller one, say 1 gig or so, for your swap files. The manual for your mobo should tell you some of your options to use RAID. You paid for it why not use it?

[Smoke24]

I think you should leave the tape. It's probably there to prevent it from shorting out on anything. Only remove it if it is in the way of hooking them up. I got one of my old IBM drives out and see what you meant. The little connector from the center to the circuit board. The tape won't hurt to leave it.

[Tarmenion]

I was just reading about RAID and it seems really complicated or am I just making it alot more then what it is do to fatigue of putting this thing together

[HAL9000]

Until you gain a bit more experience, I would suggest not using RAID at this time. I don't know about other people's opinion, but in my experience, striping the OS is usually asking for trouble. I've done a few RAID systems for people, and the most effective and most importantly, reliable setup was a 6 to 10Gb drive that has ONLY the OS loaded on it, nothing else. Then two more drives are added and striped into a single drive, all programs are loaded on this striped set.

[Smoke24]

It should be no more complicated than setting up your master and slave on IDE channels. I've never done a RAID job so I don't know how it will work with partitioning and formating so you end up with multiple drive partitions. I do know that it will need the drivers installed for RAID to work.

My bad, listen to Hal 'cause he knows how it really works and maybe you can use it later.

[HAL9000]

No Smoke, you're right, it isn't really that big a deal to set up, but until he gets this thing up and running stable, and is willing to experiment with it, I think RAID would just be an unnecessary hassle at this point.

[PardeGT]

I was thinking of putting raid in an up and coming system. Are you saying HAL9000 that you really shouldn't use raid (striping) unless you're running three drives?

[HAL9000]

You don't HAVE to, I just find that the whole setup seems to run more stable and reliably that way. Realistically, you don't need a very large drive for the C:\ drive. Mine is only partitioned to 2.5Gb out of 20Gb, but small drives are getting harder to obtain, my supplier only has 10Gb drives now. The last RAID setup I did was a 10Gb ATA66 5400RPM and 2x 30Gb 7200RPM striped to 60Gb. Performance wise, Windows was Windows, nothing special, but programs loaded on the stripe set seemed to run significantly faster than if the OS were loaded on just a 2 drive setup.

[Smoke24]

Hal,
Maybe you can answer one of the questions I kinda had above. Can you partition the drive in raid like you can otherwise? I can see what you mean by the OS being striped as it may tend to lose needed data anyway and especially if a drive went bad.

[HAL9000]

You know, that's something I've never had to do, so never really thought about it. I don't see why not. As far as FDISK is concerned, it is a single drive like any other.

[Smoke24]

That's kinda what I thought but wasn't sure if raid made it act differently.