Installing a 2nd harddrive?

[Boomyal]

When installing a second physical harddrive, where should it be hooked up to? Primary IDE as a slave or secondary IDE as the master?

 

[chuckz]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Either will work.

 

[AMD Rules]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

There is preferences for this arrangement, depending on your optical drives. Do you have either CD/RW or DVD/RW installed?

 

[b20]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

boomyal,if you have a cd writer,that should be seconary master,so install the second harddrive as primary slave.i use this combination to avoid buffer underruns on the cd writer.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

I do not have a CDRW or a DVD drive, just a regular CD reader. Don't really plan on putting any writers in this computer. I guess I'll be able to use any combo available, without having to make a big to do out of it. <br />Thanks all!

 

[kd6nem]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Boomyal, what are you planning on putting on that drive? Will you have an OS on it? I shot myself in the foot bad one time by using one to backup important files to. Then had to reformat the primary master drive running Win 98. Then went to the secondary master to restore- OOPS! No File Allocation Table- that was on the other drive! Getting data off is possible, but expensive and/or extremely tedious. There are ways to do it and ways to do it.....

 

[rwise]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Boomyal<br />If you plan on it being a data drive (something to put files on) primary slave is fine. If you plan on installing games etc to it, I would make it secondary master and move th cd-rom drive to (primary) slave (since your primary drive is full now), this (should) give it faster write to the new drive. just my thoughts.<br />Richard

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Originally posted by Bearcat Powered:<br /> Boomyal, what are you planning on putting on that drive? Will you have an OS on it? I shot myself in the foot bad one time by using one to backup important files to. Then had to reformat the primary master drive running Win 98. Then went to the secondary master to restore- OOPS! No File Allocation Table- that was on the other drive! Getting data off is possible, but expensive and/or extremely tedious. There are ways to do it and ways to do it.....

Not sure what you are saying BP, I intend to use the drive for a combination of data and programs. Coming out of another computer, the drive has an operating system on it but I will delete it along with all the installed programs. <br /><br />The original drive, with the OS, is a partitioned 2.2 GB drive and it is so full I kept getting virtual memory notices and finally some other error notice when I tried to open things. I remedied that issue by deleting large needed programs like Microsoft Office. I would reinstall these on the newly installed drive. I assume that the drive has all necessary allocation tables. Am I missing something?<br /><br />RWISE, I'll heed your advice. I won't be installing games but programs might work better that way as well. Thanks

 

[kd6nem]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Boomyall, The OS is what creates the File Allocation Tables. I don't know a whole lot about how the FAT's work when it comes to fine details, just that I found a way when reformatting my large master drive which managed to eliminate my FAT for the slave as well. It no longer knew what was on the drive. It couldn't see squat on there. I never have yet recovered it. Not so sure I really need to now, actually. There may well have been a much more sensible way to do it than what I did. I learned the hard way. I was hoping to spare you the same misery. Don't assume that anything really important on there will NECESSARILY be safe if you reformat your master drive. I do not consider most programs to be critical- just any important documents, pictures, e-mail addresses, browser favorites, & maybe paid for downloads which are not burned onto a CD. I didn't lose much other than time & sweat, but it still could have been avoided. There is hopefully a better way to configure it- and I would certainly look into that- but if nothing else I'd consider leaving the old OS on there even if you don't ever boot from it.

 

[b20]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

bp,i have a usb 40GB drive that i just formatted and it works on my desktop(win98),my notebook(win xp),my spare computer(win98) and my girlfriends computer(also win98).no OS on that baby(the 40GB).are you sure you partitioned it right?boomyal,you know about partitioning don't you?

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

yeah B20, I'm HIP to partitioning.

 

[Bob Kimber]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Boomyal,<br />I would do as B20 suggested and install the new drive as the slave on the primary IDE, I just installed a new 40GB hard drive over the weekend in my old win98 system which is 6 years old. <br /><br />In my case I installed the new drive as the master as it is faster than the 6.4GB it has replaced which was also almost full. As I have Norton System Works I was able to boot from the old drive and use Norton Ghost to clone the old drive to the new one, all I have to do now is to FDISK the old drive to partition it and then format and I will have a backup drive.<br /><br />I have been overseas for the last 6 weeks and I can't remember what OS you have, but as long as you partition then format the new drive correctly you are right to start installing programs and files to it, if you are going to keep your old drive as the boot drive, one thing to note, some computers use the cable select method (CS) to identify master and slave drives so either check your documentation on your system or check the jumper settings on your old drive when you open up the unit <br /><br />Bob

 

[Barlow]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

just buy a bigger file cabinet...

 

[Xcusme]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Boomyal,<br /><br />Without getting into a long protracted discussion about hard drive geometries and IRQ's, I suggest the following:<br /><br />Pri. Master= Hard Drive (OS etc.)<br />Pri. Slave= Blank<br /><br />Sec. Master= Hard Drive (Data Drive)<br />Sec. Slave= CDRom drive<br /><br />If your MB and controller can support ATA66/100, try to use Cable Select and 80 pin cables. This will address any issues on the secondary controller with the CDRom and Hard Drive data transfer speeds.

 

[Boomyal]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

Originally posted by Xcusme:<br /> Boomyal,<br /><br />Without getting into a long protracted discussion about hard drive geometries and IRQ's, I suggest the following:<br /><br />Pri. Master= Hard Drive (OS etc.)<br />Pri. Slave= Blank<br /><br />Sec. Master= Hard Drive (Data Drive)<br />Sec. Slave= CDRom drive<br /><br />If your MB and controller can support ATA66/100, try to use Cable Select and 80 pin cables. This will address any issues on the secondary controller with the CDRom and Hard Drive data transfer speeds.

Got it, Xcusme, except for the 'cable select'?

 

[Xcusme]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

OK, on the rear of most hard drives,CDRoms, you'll see the pins for jumpers to make the drive a Master or Slave. Another set of those pins is marked CS (cable select). If your motherboard and IDE controller supports it, you would use an 80 pin IDE data cable. If you don't see a CS setting on the drives label, flip the drive over and look at the PCB. The Master,Slave,CS pins should be printed on the PBC next to the pins.<br />Like this: Pin Jumpers <br /><br />More info than you probably care to read can be found here. <br /> CS Cable Info

 

[kd6nem]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

B20,<br />Mine worked great to- until I reformatted my main drive. Obviously I had somehow managed to have the FAT's wind up on the wrong drive. I never knew that was even possible. Still worked until I reformatted the main. Then "POOF"- nothing on the slave either. Checked with a utility and there was stuff there, just not recognizable any longer. (Even when you erase all your files they are really still there- just not recognized any longer. The computer then feels free to write over the top of them. So long as not overwritten it can be recovered, though not necessarily easily) Since yours works on different machines I must assume that you didn't find my bonehead method and actually found a way that works. Good deal!<br /><br />I may have gotten a little overzealous with some hard drive utilities or something. Somehow I didn't configure it right...<br />There are ways of formatting which use a conversion table to make the number of sectors appear to be different than actually exist on the physical drive. It was a few years back, and I don't perfectly remember what I did. Just want to encourage my fellow I-Boaters to make sure they don't make the same goof I did, WHATEVER it was I did.

 

[FSHKPR]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

here is a great site for computer questions. actually questions on just about anything. i have used this site for alot of different things. naturally some experts are better than others.<br /> http://allexperts.com/

 

[b20]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

BP,there is usually 2 copies of the FAT on a disc.did you try to recover the second copy?what OS are you using.was the disc formatted FAT32 or NTFS?

 

[kd6nem]

Re: Installing a 2nd harddrive?

B20, It was SE in FAT 32. The FAT's on the small drive went away when I re-formatted the big drive- both were incorrectly placed on the wrong drive it appears. I have no other explanation for it suddenly becoming unreadable and the FAT's suddenly disappearing. I wasn't even aware this was a possibility until then. I have no clue how I managed to do it that way, though I may have been playing with a utility Seagate gave me for configuring partitions & such at the time I formatted the smaller 6.4 Gig Fujitsu. Don't remember the timing of events that well. Still haunts me just a bit even after a few years- hard to learn from your mistakes when you don't know quite how you did what you did. I get a little obsessed with troubleshooting stuff like this. And this was my backup drive- I had archived everything of value onto it before reformatting the big one. Fortunately I had some relatively recent CD backups also. I probably wouldn't be so obsessed if I knew exactly what I did. Might be that few would ever be able to concoct this sort of scenario. Guess I was just "creative". <br />The upside is that I retained a lot less junk than I otherwise would have!