Hd's

Can I put 2 HD's in my old comp? both are xp, both work they are diff size and make. I have never tried this before. I just plugged them in, in line only the one on the end of the belt shows. can this be done right so I have a choice if which to use on boot up?

 

You need to make sure that one is set to MASTER, and one is set to SLAVE.

Almost assuredly, the original drive is set to MASTER, so pull out the additional drive, and look at the back. You'll see some pins and jumpers.
Somewhere on the drive, usually on the top, but some times on the back, there will be a diagram of the jumper settings to identify the drive as a slave.

Set the drive to be a slave, and reconnect it.

YOu can let it boot to windows, but a faster way of checking to see if it is detected is to go into BIOS before it starts to load windows. Many systems will show a key to press to "enter setup ", and that is BIOS.
With most newer systems, it is not really necessary to go into BIOS, so if it were me, I'd probably just let it boot to windows and see if the drive shows up.

 

I'm going to give you a qualified no, that isn't going to work. Both XP installations would have to have been done with the same motherboard, same hardware and same drivers and then you would have to edit the boot.ini file of the default system. You might be able to pull this off by trying a repair install on the second drive (assuming the first drive was originally setup with XP on this particular motherboard) but you'd have to disconnect the first drive while doing the repair install on the second.

One can't just throw an existing drive with a pre-existing XP installation into a system with different hardware and expect anything good to happen. You can add a drive with a pre-existing installation but you're not going to be able to run that drive's OS without some painstaking work.

 

With all due respect, I'm afraid I have to almost entirely disagree.

Firstly, the poster didn't write anything about wanting to dual boot from the second drive.

Secondly, even if that was the goal, or even if the second drive were replacing the first drive entirely, XP absolutely will boot up. It will detect new hardware, and it will install software for the new hardware and if needed, it will ask for the XP cd to get drivers, and it will boot to the desktop.
Depending on which version of XP it is, if the hardware configuration is substantially different, it will require authentication/activation.

But it certainly will boot up.
I've done it before.

If the XP CD does not have drivers for the new (relative to the new OS on the new drive) hardware (rare but possible) one would need to have driver disks available, but even if not, it would still boot and leave the item(s) deactivated in device manager.

However, the first step is to get the drive detected, and that won't happen at all if both are set to master on the same IDE channel.

 

Dytrog does want to dual boot.

I have on several occasions put in a drive containing an OS from another machine and had it work, and had it do exactly as Bilb0 suggests ......... install some new hardware, etc upon bootup. However, doing so ultimately also created alot of problems with the OS ....... driver errors, drivers loading for non-existent hardware, permissions problems on registry keys and files, etc. Doing a re-install of the second drive from the start is the best course of action, as it will also append the boot.ini as needed.

If both drives are already set to cable select, they will work without changing any jumper settings.

 

Bilb0:

Not a problem - that's what makes this board so informative for all. I look forward to your counsel which will get Dytrog through this and prove me wrong.

 

noahdfear:

No arguement on a single drive run as a single drive. We all also know that a repair install is going to be required to achieve longer term stability.

My "qualified" no relates more to the issues associated with a foreign drive being able to dual boot without facing down some serious painstaking issues. I know Dytrog is an enthusiast and I believe Bilb0 is highly qualified, so I'm looking forward to see how this all develops.

Re: the CS settings - I think its been at least 5 years since I've set an ATA HDD to anything other than CS with the exception of trying to clean third party disc utilities or RAID configurations by cabling as slave in a different machine and running FDISK (my own, "when all else fails" approach, that I can only defend by saying it works for me). However, Bilb0's jumper comments are right on the money re: getting Dytrog ready for some action and getting the second drive recognized and initialized.

This should be a good thread and I will follow it with interest. I've learned a lot from others on this board and am hopeful that this too proves to be a most valuable experience.

 

Wow, how did I miss that???

Well, that changes things a little bit and to an extent, with dual boot in mind, I'd end up agreeing with noahdfear, in that the hardware that is missing from the second drive's OS can be problematic if you're expecting to boot to it on a regular baisis.

If it were me, after I copied data files (if any) across the drives, I would do a fresh install and then drag the data back (if need be).

As for the cable select, perhaps I'm more old school on that issue.
There is such a thing as IDE hard drives that simply do not work together, and I have encountered situations where two drives will not work together on CS, but the will as Master/Slave. It is true enough that some will not even work together as Master/Slave, but if not, they will not work on CS either.
Not knowing the drives that Dytrog is working with, to me, it just seems more reliable to suggest the Master/Slave settings as the least likely to encounter compatibility problems.

Anyway, that's been my experience.
Sorry for missing the Dual Boot remark.

 

I tried changing one to slave pins put it where the belt said slave. told it add hardware. restart. all I got was a screen like no communication from comp. disconected tried both one at a time they are still good. the one that came with the comp. is slower so i use the one i had left over from other comp's i had worked on. both say my floppy is ok but it will not work on either. this was going on before i did hard drive changes.