Hard Drive Swap How-To

Hi!

To say that I couldn't live without BBS is a terrible understatement. I don't pop in all that often but, when I do, the answers I seek are always here. No need to go anywhere else at all. I simply must get a membership paid up here.

Okay, now for my newest endeavor:

What I want to do today is swap the hard drives & ROMS from my computer with the ones from my daughter's computer and then deliver my fast P4 1800 to her, in place of her (formerly my) P3 750. Both are custom boxes.

She is moving into her first home and is under the impression that Daddy is simply cleaning hers. It's kind of a surprise present for her.

I need to know how best to do the master/slave configurations. I don't know what is the best way. I have successfully added an extra HD to my unit in the past so I'm not totally green but could use some guidance here, if you please?

Like I said before, there will be a complete swap of HDs and ROMs between boxes.

I want to end up with my CDROM and Burner in her PC along with my 2 physical HDs. In turn, I need her Burner (no CDROM) and her 2 physical HDs in my machine. Catch is I want to end up installing a 3rd physical HD in her machine in a few days. (She will then have 4 devices which I believe is just fine) She will end up with 3 devices for now and I will end up with my original 4.

My machine (soon to be hers):
P4 1800, CDROM, Sony Burner, 1 40Gig Maxtor, 1 80 Gig Maxtor

Her machine ( soon to be mine again):
P3 750, Lite-On Burner only, 2 separate physical HDs, both 13.6 Maxtors. (soon to have a 3rd 120Gig Maxtor)

All drives are ata 7200 RPM units. Both systems are XP Pro.

Now, please, can someone please give me the ideal Master/Slave configurations for the end result machines? I really don't want to do this until someone here suggests the cat's meow setup for me.

I don't want advice from some local "Johnny Hard Drive" who heard from someone.....who read somewhere......etc.

Anyone want to help a Daddy surprise his Angel????

Thanx in advance,
Randy

OOPS! Forgot to mention no formatting going on here. Just want to end up with whatever we had, her system in a fast machine, my system in my old P3. Just like nothing happened with regard to our Windows systems. Sorry for not mentioning.

 

General rule of thumb: If the system contains a burner, mount it on a separate channel from the burner's source files.
What that means, is that if you burn lots from one hard drive, make sure the burner is on a different channel than that drive. If you burn lots from a CD-ROM, put the burner on a different channel. Data transfer can then go bi-directional through the BUS.
If you burn from a hard drive and from a CD, then mount the HD and CD on one channel, the burner and secondary hard drive on the other.
Boot drive should always be primary master. After that, it doesn't matter, unless you're only using 40 wire cables, and setting the jumpers as master/slave.
If you're using 80 wire, with the CS configuration, then you can mount an ATA33 device (CD-ROM) as slave to an ATA100 device (hard drive) and there won't be any slowdowns.
If you're still using 40 wire cables, then you'll have to keep the hard drives on one channel, and the Optical devices on another, otherwise the hard drive will slow down to the speed of the slowest device on the same channel, in this case ATA33 speeds if an optical device is slaved.

When switching drives from one system to another, there's always something left to clean up afterwards.
If you're using Win98, you can minimize the hassles, by deleting the ENUM key from the registry as the LAST thing, before moving the drive. This will force a reinstall of ALL hardware, which is what you want, because all the hardware is different.
Because you're using XP/2k, then a repair install may be needed, especially if moving from a board that has one chipset, to a board that has a different one. Don't forget that every motherboard assigns resources differently, and any number of things won't work until it's sorted.
It would be much easier if you were formatting and going with new installs on both.

In your case, boot drive as primary master, CD-ROM as slave. Hard drive as Secondary master, burner as slave.
In the other machine, hard drive primary master, hard drive secondary master, burner as slave. If you do more burning from the second hard drive than the first, then move the burner to primary slave.
Clear as mud?

 

Thanx a billion, reboot!

Not clear as mud at all. In fact, extremely informative and even as much as customized for my needs. Wow!

Your post is absolutely getting copy/pasted into my stache of tips.

Actually, I posted something this morning to do with my scrapping the project due to the impossibility of each HD to boot in another machine. I wonder where that post went to?????

Anyhow, thanx again for the superb way you took the time to lay it all out for me like you did. Splendid info for the next setup I get into.

Adios for now, Amigo!

Randy