Hard Drive Dilema

I recently posted a question regarding a second hard drive and why Explorer(windows) wasn't recognizing it. I know that when a drive hasn't been assigned a drive letter it won't be recognized by windows explorer. For now I have to use my old drive (40GB Seagate) as the master because I haven't formatted the new one. I want to make the new drive (80GB Western Digital) the master but I have to copy the old to the new. I have Drive Image 2002 which should perform this operation. My question is this: Can I just copy the old drive to a Primary Partition on the new one, and switch the ide cables around or won't it boot that way. I have no idea what to do, can anyone help?

 

I copied a 40gig WD ( running 98SE ) to an 80gig WD drive using the software that came with the HD.

It copied all partitions ( C: thru H: ) and resized them to match.

I changed the jumper, plugged the rascal in and it was just like it had always been there.

Took about 6 hours to do though. But was well worth it to not lose a thing. it saved many hours of work and data.

And the best part is that I still have the 40gig as it was to use in case of need. All I gotta do is change the cable and restart the machine.

And after all that I spent the next hour or so putting XP Pro on top of SE. That was 6 months ago and it is still here.

But if your 40gig is all one partition I would not recommend the partition resizing part. I believe will copy size for size.

BillyBob

 

OOPSS !! I forgot something.

Before using the suggestions in my previous reply.

MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO CLUSTER OR SECTOR ERRORS ON THE EXISTING HD BEFORE attempting to copy.

The best thing to use is Norton Disk Doctor FROM DOS.

At least that is what I use.

BillyBob

 

After you copied the old drive and switched the ide plugs around did you have to switch the jumpers on the drives to relate to the new configuration? (i.e. changing the old "master" to the new "slave" jumper configuration)

 

Mick, your DriveImage software should give you a couple of options. One is to copy from one partition on "disk A" to another partition on "disk B ". Or it'll let you "image" the old drive to the new drive. This means it will make a duplicate drive out of your old one.

Considering what I think you want to do, I would suggest that you do the imaging and not the copy. And yes, you'll want to set the new drive to master and connect the IDE connector at the end of the cable to it.

Once you've got that working you can then slave the old drive by putting it on the "middle" connector of the IDE cable and set the jumper to slave on that drive. You could then boot a Win98 startup disk and quick-format the old drive to clear it of its contents - assuming that's what you want to do and that the new drive is working flawlessly. You might want to back up critical data before doing any of this.

 

I did not leave the old drive installed as a 2nd drive.

But I did have to set the old and new as master/slave setup until I got it copied. I then set boths HDs to single drive settings again.

I do not have both connected at the same time. Don't need them. I have another 40gig that I can use as a slave if I wish. But again I do not need it.

The old 40gig is what you might call a BACKUP "just in case "

BillyBob

 

Chiles4, I think you understand that I want to make the old drive the slave after transfering ALL information to the new drive. But will making an "image" of the old drive enable me to boot from it. I didn't think you could boot from an .pqi file.

 

Chiles4

What is the deal about putting the HD on the end or middle cable conector ?

Does it make a difference whether one or two drives are connected ?

My master right now is on the middle plug and if I hook the 2nd HD to the end plug I see no problem in XP or 98SE.

I know the floppy cable makes a difference. But I have not seen and HD cable make a difference.

But will making an "image" of the old drive enable me to boot from it.

I need to ask the same question.

BillyBob

 

MICK

As a suggestion.

If you do wish to clean off and use the old HD as a slave ?

( FROM EXPERIENCE ) make it THE ONLY drive connected when you format it,

I would also suggest that you do nothing with it until you are VERY SURE that the new one is going to be OK. Run the new for few days and beat hello out of it before destorying the old.

BillyBob

 

I think in actuality it doesn't really matter. It's just standard practice. When you put the master in the middle of the cable, do you have to jumper your drives as Cable Select? Or does the IDE controller deserve more credit than that? I suppose you could do anything you want with drives and their position on the cable. I think the controller will figure it all out as long as you don't have conflicting jumper settings.

Yes, imaging a bootable drive will make the "new" drive bootable. I've even copied a bootable partition over another bootable partition on a 2nd drive and that worked as well. But they always had the same OS. To be honest, I'm not sure that would work if say you were copying a Win98 bootable partition over an XP bootable partition. I remember trying to read through the details of Norton Ghost when doing this and it was quite confusing.

I don't use DriveImage Pro but I'm positive that if you image one drive to another, it will boot just fine.

 

Hi Mick

I think .pqi you refer to is an image file, a backup file. You probably want to image from "disk to disk" or "disk to partition ".

Matt

 

OK got it now. You mention something that I did not even think of as I never used it. Cable Select.

If you have the drives jumpered for Cable Select then in could make a difference which plug was used.

Otherwise I think the IDE controller gets its ideas as to what to do from the HD jumper settings.

MY drives are jumpers for they way they are used.

Single or Master with Slave. and Slave with Master.

I switched HDs the other day and it was a no boot problem. The drive in question was jumpered as a Master with Slave instead of a single. Set the jumper correctly and all was well again.

With floppys it does make a difference which plug is used. And it makes no difference whether you have 1 or 2. One plug is A: the other is B:

BillyBob

 

Sorry to butt in here, but learning something new.

I know an image will boot if jumpers AND cables are switched.

Do I understand that you are saying that if I have a master on the cable end and slave on the middle connector, image the master to the slave, change jumpers (not cable position) and the IDE controller will figure it out and the image will boot??

Boy, if that is true, I sure have been doing a lot of unneccesary cable plugging and unplugging.

Martin

 

Martin, your answer is yes. I've never had a "master" drive in the middle of the cable. But come to think of it, I've never used two hard drives in one rig unless they were RAID-0 or one drive was attached to a Raid controller as an extra IDE device.

I find 40GB drives to be plenty roomy. Actually what I do is buy single device rounded IDE cables that are shorter than the standard 18" - usually 10" or 12 ". It helps alot with cable mess and looks alot nicer to boot.

 

Hey Chiles, thanks, would have saved a lot of cable switching setting up this machine.

40 Gig drive is plenty big for normal use, but, I'm trying to work with Digital Video Camera, movie making and editing and a lot of digital images.

One hour of digital video tape from mini DVI camera transferred to hard drive as AVI file will burn over 10 gigs of space. Then, editing the tape, program uses more space for temp files for final rendering as it does not change AVI file. Makes a 40 gig drive look tiny.

In '98 I had a 13 gig drive, used it for 3 years, never ran out of space. But with this digital imaging stuff, it is a different story.

Martin

 

Update

Earlier in the day I had switched from my XP HD to the 98 HD.

I had been using the middle plug on the cable as that is where they were both set up.

I just switched back to the XP HD and see that it is plugged into the end plug of the cable.

I see NO problems.

Jumpers on both are set for Single HD.

BillyBob

 

WOW! BillyBob, you've rocked my world! I've been building PCs since '97 and I never put a single hard drive on the middle connector because we were always told, "always put the master on the end connector ".

I think I need to go out and try more new things.

 

I have never seen it make a difference when using two drives on one cable. But I will say this honestly.

"I NEVER paid any attention either. " I just plugged them in.

I have a spare slave drive here so maybe just for the heck of it I will try ( in a day or two ) the Master in the middle and slave on the end and see what happens.

It will only take me about 10 minutes hook them up.

BB

 

I just could not wait

I now have two drives on the Primary contorller.

The Master is in the middle. The slave of course on the end.

Now I need to ask what if any problems I should look for.

XP picked it right up as I: J: K: the way it should have.

Also two CDROMS S: & T: ) on the secondary controller. No Idea which plug they are on.

S: it the CDR/RW. T: is a regular CDROM.

BillyBob