Help Me Explain

[SARGE]

Bud has a 4 gig hd he used in pc, then removed it and installed a 10 gig. and put Win98 on it. He then put the old one back in, intending to use it as a slave, but it still has Win98 on it. He says both are jumpered correctly and even tried cable select. It doesn't work. Never having added a second drive, I suggested that he now has 2 hd's with drive C on both, which in my opinion, can't work. He needs to reformat the 4 gig with the newer one disconnected from the cable, right? Then reconnect the new and let the pc detect the old. I also have doubts about running Win98 on 2 hd's even with 2 different drive letters. I can't explain it where he understands

This is the bud I'm referring to:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...ock+the+system

[morriswindgate]

He needs to not only format the old drive, he also needs to FDISK it. Just remember this is now drive 2 in FDISK

[Gintaras]

Did your bud change BIOS settings for 2nd(4G) HDD as Primary Slave and jumpered as Slave?

If jumpered correctly with correct BIOS settings, Win98 should boot from Primary Master (10G), C:/, and assuming there are only one partition on each HDD, 2nd- 4G HDD(even if there still is Win98 installed), would be E: (if there is only 1 CD-ROM, which would be D: ).
Old 4G HDD could be formatted from Win98, just right click on E: (2nd HDD), and choose: "format".

[HAL9000]

Why should he have to FDISK the old drive? It should still boot to Windows, the 10Gb as a C drive if it is set to master and the 4Gb as the D drive if it is set to a slave, format the D.

[SARGE]

He doesn't want to format; has stuff on old and doesn't want to lose it, or back it up. I'll mail him and advise to check bios. However, pc won't automatically change the drive letter on a disk that's already loaded, right? Seems that's too easy.

[Gintaras]

PC will change drive letter automatically.
New HDD-10G with new Win98 as a Primary Master will be C:, old HDD-4G as Primary Slave will be D: (I was little wrong in my previous post about drive letters).

He can transfer all the stuff he needs from old HDD to the new one and after he can format old one.

[morriswindgate]

Since he wants to keep everything from the old drive, he should get a copy of Norton Ghost and Disk to Disk transfer and the use Ghost to create a compressed image of the C Drive to store on the D Drive. One of the first things you should do when you have a second hard drive is use Ghost to make a compressed Image of C, there is nothing like having problems and knowing that you are less than 30 minutes away from having everything back to 100%

[archie]

Just to clarify [and correct me if this is wrong] ... it doesn't matter that there is an OS on the smaller drive [except possibly for when it comes time to install on the other drive and the system says 'wait, you already have windows installed, blah blah blah' ... just disconnect the small drive for the install]. Whichever one is the primary master is the one that will be read as the boot drive. To avoid making a mistake and working in the wrong folders though, these folders on the smaller drive could be renamed.
So it sounds like he's doing it right and we just have to figure out why it doesn't 'work'.

[LawyerRon]

He should still be able to make the second drive work even if the second drive has Windows on it. The system just won't load windows from that drive. Just make sure the bios is detecting the drive first. During the POST, you should see the second drive listed. Go into Auto IDE detction in the bios if necessary and detect the drive there. Then reboot and the POST screen should list the drive.

[glc]

Sarge - I slave old drives into new computers *exactly* as you describe all the time to transfer the customer's data. There is no reason the machine should not boot and see both drives as long as Windows was installed properly on the new drive and the drives are hooked up correctly and seen by the BIOS. The old drive will be seen as the "D" drive.

Double check the jumpers, try a different IDE ribbon cable, set all IDE channels in the standard CMOS setup to AUTO and watch the POST screen to make sure both drives are seen.

However - if EZ-Bios or Ontrack DDO is involved here - on either drive - there MAY be a problem seeing both drives.

[SARGE]

He saw them recognized at bootup correctly. However, in Device Manager, both were shown, but no drive letter was assigned to the 10 gigger (slave). It has Ontrack. I suggested he delete both drives, reverse the primary/slave jumpers and reboot. It now sees the 10 gig as master and the 4 gig has a drive letter, so he's fine.

Remind me never to get into tech support over the phone. I don't see how you guys do it with "some" folks. Bud is actually a great friend, but can drive you nuts when trying to help, especially when I'm not exactly sure myself

[mairving]

Now, Sarge, see what happens when you hang around here too much. People are wanted your computer advice now.

[SARGE]

Yeah, right. I know just enough to be dangerous But I've learned a bunch hanging out here versus fishing and drinking all night as before. Then, we tried to solve the world's problems (or at least identify them). Now, I've learned that pc's are not forgiving, they want things a certain way, kinda like a wife. Least I can shutdown a pc, reboot, or erase and start over.

I'm still trying to learn how to do a "low-level FDISK" reboot mentioned once.