Dual Boot 2HDD NewHDD install?

Had 2 hard drives, "C" & "D" running 98 SE on "C" using "D" drive as storage and backup. Installed XP Home on "D" partitioned, NTFS file system ( MS tech support's advice to overcome installation problems) and ended up with "C ", "D ", "E ". Now, I need more hard drive space.

I want to buy an 80+ gig drive to accomodate digital video and would like to keep the existing dual boot setup. How in the world do I install it? All four IDE channels are occupied. Do I remove "C" drive and copy "D" to new HDD? Then re-install "C" or remove "D" and copy "C" and re-install "D" or will either or neither work?

I have no idea where this machine boots from, so confusing. Any help will be appreciated.

Home built computer
Soyo K7 VTA Pro MOBO
Athalon XP 2000+
754mb SDRAM
IBM 30GB "C "
Maxtor 40GB partitions "D" 20GB, "E" 20GB
Sony CDRW "F "
Artec DVD "G "

 

The computer still boots from C.
If you look (Explorer set to view all files), you will see boot.ini, ntldr, and a few other files necessary for a dual-boot system.
There's an easy way, and a hard way.
The easy way is to get a copy of Norton's Ghost, and simply ghost drive C, and leave D (and E) where it is.
You can then remove the old drive, insert the new, and be up and running in a few minutes.
If you then want to get rid of D and consolidate everything on one drive, you can use Partition Magic.
Not everyone has access to these programs, and there are manual ways to transfer all your data, and dual-boot setup to one single drive, but it's time consuming to explain and do.
Let us know how confident you feel about working in DOS, with fdisk, format, and xcopy (or xxcopy), and I'm sure we can explain in steps how to do it.
If you're not at all confident in this, then get ahold of Ghost and PM to do it all the easy way.

 

Hey Reboot: thanks for the post. It is a big help just knowing where the boot.ini file is located. I should have been able to figure it out with a file search or explorer and I feel like a dumbo.

I have a copy of Symantic's Ghost somewhere, also Powerquest's Drive Image and Partition Magic. I've never used any of the three, was too intimidated by their interface. Same goes for fdisk etc. and dos.

Anyhow, a follow up question. The maxtor drive shipped with a diskette that will, in dos, duplicate an old drive on a new one. I can use it to transfer byte for byte "C" onto a new drive. Here's what I would have to do.

Remove "D" Slave, Install new drive as slave, boot from diskette, Copy "C "to new drive, remove "C ", re-jumper and install new drive as master, re-install "D" slave, reboot and everything will run fine with lots more space??????

Wishful thinking??

 

The Maxtor utility will do what you want, but it's way more confusing to use than Partition magic.
I would install PM, and your new drive, and just play on that drive, see what PM will do. You can always wipe it out and start fresh. Once you're comfortable with the interface, then do whatever you want with your drives.
Here's what I would do.
1.) Install new drive as slave.
2.) Use Ghost to clone your current C to the new drive.
3.) Remove the old drive, replace with new in Primary master position.
4.) Boot, and install Partition magic, make, change, whatever you like.
5.) Install your old slave drive as slave again.
5b.) You can leave it like this if you choose, or continue with #6.
6.) Use Ghost (partition to partition) to put your D drive's contents back in the (new) D partition of the new drive.
With only one change to the boot.ini everything will be the way it was, but all on the new HD.
You will have to change the Win98 line in boot.ini to reflect that D is now a partition of C, and not a separate drive. In boot.ini, change the line that reads something like this:
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Windows 98
to read this: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS= "Windows 98

This will work spendidly, providing that you use Ghost to copy everything from the old C to the new, as described in steps 1 through 5.

 

Thanks for the come back on this. I ordered the new drive today, will try to read Ghost and PM books, maybe I can learn how.

Thanks again

 

At
4.) Boot, and install Partition magic, make, change, whatever you like.

I would create a second partition on the new drive. THEN you will be able to Ghost partition to partition since it will now exist.

Frankly, I would do away with the Win 98 OS altogether unless you have a pressing need for it such as software that does not work under XP.

 

Hey, try to learn something new everyday. Anybody? I expect new HD to arrive today, 80gig and want to install it ASAP. Now, I got the two drives on the two IDE channels. Would it be possible?, prudent?, feasable? to install a PCI card with two more IDE channels and run the 80 gig drive as a third drive for video storage only??

I see PCI IDE cards for sale that say that they support 98 but haven't seen one yet that says it supports XP.

I don't mean to disregard all the good advice I got on how to configure, but this appears to me to be another potential solution. What's your take on this?

 

As you can see from my Signature below, I have a Promise ATA133 TX2 Ultra PCI card installed in my computer and it supports Win XP.

You will get another 2 IDE channels hence, in theory, you may connect up to 4 other hard disks provided you have the necessary slots in your computer case to house them.

As to whether it is prudent to have another 4 hard drives is whether you have a need for them. A couple of large capacity drives up to the limit supported by your BIOS is all you should need.

 

Thanks for the reply Mahmud. I went to the Promise Technology site and tracked down the card you mentioned. On Promise site they list two bios for download. also, I found this at the vendor's site:

System Requirements - Novell NetWare 3.12, Novell NetWare 4.1, Microsoft Windows 95/98, Linux, Microsoft Windows 2000 / NT4.0, Novell NetWare 5.x, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition, Microsoft Windows XP

Of course, neither site advises if the bios must be changed or what Novell NetWare is. I'm going to try and find a site for Novell, maybe they have something posted. But , when you installed your PCI card, was a bios flash neccessary and did you need the Novell NetWare??

PS I have plenty of space, but I think like you do that one more hard drive is one too many, I like your advice, but I'd like to learn about this approach.

Thanks again.

 

The BIOS on the Promise site is for the BIOS upgrade of the card itself and should not be necessary at the moment as the drivers CD supplied will have the latest. I did not need to flash it since on checking I found that I has the latest.

I did not need Netware and did not install.

Installing the new drive on the Promise Ultra card with your old drives still connected to the motherboard will allocate the next drive letter to it and hence there will be no change to your current dual boot setup.

Please post back the outcome.

 

Thanks again mahmud;

I'm still waiting for the arrival of the new drive, thought it would be here yesterday, but today, I hope.

Is there a reason to use the Promise PCI card if I only have two drives installed?

I noticed that you are using Promise's card with two drives. Speed increase?? Some other advantage?

I've never seen any postings or discussions on this approach, as a matter of fact, I had seen these cards advertised before, but had not done any inquiry about their intended use.

Seems if you can use the two onboard IDE channels and only have the two hard drives, why waste a PCI slot? As we agree that two large drives are enough, what am I missing?

 

Both my drives are ATA133 (UDMA 6) but my mother board only supports ATA66 (UDMA 4).

I could have used the mother board for my drives but would not gain from the vast difference in the transfer speeds of my ATA133 drives unless I used the Promise card.

My CD/DVD and CD-RW drives are still connected to the mother board Secondary IDE controller as I found that on the Promise card they ran in PIO mode rather than DMA.

Check first what UDMA your mother board supports and what speed both your hard drives are and decide accordingly. You could always connect to the mother board and later on add the Promise card if you wish.

 

Good Morning mahmud: Ok, I understand why you are using the Promise card. This machine supports the Ultra ATA 133 UDMA.

The new drive arrived yesterday afternoon and I'm going to shut down and install now. Got my fingers crossed, but if you never hear from me again, you'll know what happened.

Thanks again

 

Hi, sorry to take so long to come back on this. Well, new drive arrived and I installed. I couldn't find my copy of Ghost, so I used the Maxtor downloaded floppy to copy C drive to new 80 gig Maxtor drive. You could guess what happened!! When I replaced the C drive with the new 80, the whole system crashed. Wiped out XP, I really don't know what happened.

Fortunately I had my pix & stuff backed up on D or I would have lost that too. Since I didn't have a drive image, I had to re-install everything, from OS on down. so I did a clean install of XP on new 80 (C) and re-installed everything. I converted everything to FTS file system and wiped out dual boot with 98SE. Took weeks to get back to where I was. Funny thing was, when I couldn't boot from new drive, I put old C back and no go. Would not boot. Also, bios wouldn't recognize D drive after re-install of OS, turned out to be a bad cable. Almost drove me crazy till I replaced it.

So, after getting up and running, I had a 30 gig drive sitting unused on my desk plus C master and D slave, CD ROM and DVD drives in the machine. I ordered and installed the Promise ATA IDE PCI card, installed it and the old C drive. So, just to add to my own confusion, I now have C (80 gig) D & E, (20 gigs each of 40 gig drive) and F (30 gigs on Promise PCI card) Total 150 gigabites of hard drive space!!

So now, machine is running AOK. (at least until I ***** it up again) Thanks again for all your help.

 

Glad to note that you are finally up and running again. As regards Ghost, did you make a floppy when you first installed Ghost ?. That is all you need to use it unless the installation of the Promise card requires you to make another floppy after installing Ghost again on your new setup.

Since the Promise card has 2 EIDE channels have you not considered putting all your disks on it leaving your CD-Rom and CD-RW (if you have one) on the motherboard's connectors ?.

 

Hi Muhaud: I never could find my Ghost CD!! Don't know where the heck I put it. I must have several hundred cds around here and that's one I can't seem to find. Still Looking.

I hadn't thought about using the Promise card for the C & D drives, what would the advantage be?? Would the CD drives go on the primary motherboard channel or stay on secondary? Also, I guess I would have to change the boot menu somehow, not sure how the Promise card figures in there, 'cause it doesn't show up until after the bios screen drive recognition closes, then I get a DOS screen from the Promise card that asks if I want to set up RAID, then searches out and finds the 3rd drive. Then the system boots. I figured this was normal behavior?????

 

Hi Martin.
The name is Mahmud by the way.

If the card has been installed in the correct manner as they instruct, then you should not get a message about "Raid..." at every boot. Instead you would get a DOS like screen showing the Promise BIOS loading and then detecting your drives.

Install your C & D drives on the cards first channel as Primary Master and Slave and the others (E & F) as the Secondary Master and Slave. I believe that this way you will not get the message you are getting.

You do not need to do anything in the BIOS as the Promise card happily works alongside the motherboard controllers.

Having all your disks on the Promise would give you maximum performance from your card and make it worth the investment.

The CD-Rom etc should remain on the motherboard's Secondary Controller.

 

Sorry I misspelled your name. Won't happen again I was just in sort of a hurry to get my daughter to soccer practice.

 

No harm done.

 

Muhmud: You still there? I had some error messages, lockups, and had to flash bios. Anyhow, I installed GoBack and disabled System Restore. Now, what's puzzeling me is the machine hard drive activity light blinks constantly. I was looking around the Roxio site and it has some references to this problem, blaming it on running programs. But this activity continues when nothing is running.

Just wondering if you have had this problem, seems abnormal to me.