adding a 2nd hard drive

I have Windows 98 with all the latest updates. I want to install a slave hard drive. I have the right ribbon cable for two hard drives and an extra power connector. I have the 2nd hard drive optioned as a slave. I assume that I shut down my computer, install the 2nd hard drive, connect the ribbon cable and power cable. What do I do after that to finish the installation of the 2nd hard drive? thanks

 

Not sure of your brand of drives. But I believe you also have to set the main drive as master. Normally that is printed right on the drive on how to set up the jumpers. If it is an old drive, you probably don't need to format, just delete what is there. If it is new, check with the manufacturers site, lots of them have specific format procedures/tools that you can download.

 

thanks aleekat. I already checked the options on my existing drive and they are set to master. I also looked at the status of my existing drives in BIOS and the connection for the slave drive is set to auto detect. What now?

 

If the jumpers to the slave drive are correct. Just turn off the computer. Disconnect the power cord also. Open the case, the main drive probably has a double ribbon cable already. Should also be an extra power connector already there. Hook up the ribbon, the power, all back together and boot. It should appear in win explorer. Is this a new drive? What brand?

 

No its not a new drive. It is a Wester Digital Caviar 33100a that my son had in his computer. It was still working good when he upgraded to a larger drive. The existing drive is a Samsung SW0434A. If I do as you suggested, will the new drive just automatically be recognized and assigned a drive letter by Windows 98?

 

If you decide to wipe it clean, go to Western Digital's site. They have a pretty good tool to format their drives properly.

 

Food for thought.

Unless I missed it somewhere no one has mentioned the effect that adding an HD to a machine may have on the CDROM.

Unless it is set high to begin with it will go up in letters according to the number of partitions added.

If it is E: now and one partiton is added it wil go to F:

If two partitons are added it will go to G:

BillyBob

 

Well I have been dinging around with this off and on for the past week and just couldn't make it work. I shut down and unplugged the computer. Installed the 2nd hard drive and turned the computer back on. As the stuff started to scroll down the screen I saw where the system recognized that there was a 2nd hard drive installed. After the system finished booting up I went to My Computer and no 2nd hard drive showed up - only the original hard drive (C, the CD-ROM drive (D and the CDRW drive (E. I then went to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Device Manager > Disk Drives. Both hard drives showed up there. However, when I went to Properties > Settings for the 2nd hard drive there was nothing in the Current Drive Letter Assignment and I couldn't enter anything in the field or the fields below to reserve a drive letter. I tried various things, including removing everything, going into setup when everything was re-installed again, etc. I just couldn't seem to make it work. I was trying to install the 2nd hard drive to have more room when I upgrade to Windows XP. I guess I will just go ahead and upgrade and see if Windows XP will let me add the 2nd drive. Thanks all for your input.

 

I was just going over this and discovered the above instruction.

And this

Turn off the machine yes. Even at the Surge suppresser. ( if one does not exist get one. )

Unplug the power cord NO !!.

Doing so leaves no path for any possible static to discharge through and can build up to machine/component damaging levels.

And when doing anything within the machine keep it plugged in and some part of your body always in contact with the metal case.

BillyBob

 

Are you certain the added drive is partitioned? It may not be recognized by the drive letter process if it isn't partitioned even though its existence is noted elsewhere. I know you said it was working when you got it from your son, but could it be that something happened in the transfer process? Run fdisk and find out.

 

Possibility

Do a START~RUN~SYSEDIT

And see if there is a CDROM driver loading from the Config.sys. If there is just put REM and a space at the beginning.

If there is it can sometimes stop things from working properly. And the CDROM line in the Autoexec. bat can stop the CDROMS from being relettered. Taking the driver out of the config,sys will stop that.

only the original hard drive ( (C, the CD-ROM drive (D and the CDRW drive (E

This is also wrong . they should have been moved up.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob,
The issue about the power cord came up on this board over a year ago, whether to unplug it or not. It was an even consensus. Half to unplug, the other half leave it plugged in.

 

Maybe it was. But maybe some of the newer menbers did not read it.

So I just bring it up and let the reader decide.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob - Here's what in my CONFIG.SYS file

[common]
rem device=C:\CdExpert\actcd.sys /d:mscd001
[common]
device=C:\CdExpert\actcd.sys /d:mscd001
DEVICE=C:\CDPRO\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:MSCD001

Do you see anything there that might be causing the problem? I think the cdexpert and cdpro stuff shown refers to some software that I no longer have.



pstanhope - by fdisk do you mean format the disk? If so, is there a way to format the disk if I can't get a drive letter assigned to it?

thanks people.

 

kensquare,

Was this old drive also Win98? You could verify that the drive is still functional by setting it as master and installing it by itself. You can do fdisk and format it while you're there.

 

device=C:\CdExpert\actcd.sys /d:mscd001
DEVICE=C:\CDPRO\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:MSCD001

YES. They are BOTH CDROM DRIVERS.

D:MSCD001 says so.

I would REM both of them out because they ARE NOT need by and may cause problems for Windows or Windows proper setup.

And unless you have DOS programs that need the CDROM they are not needed anyway.

Just for testing it will not hurt to REM them out. And if you do REM them Shut the machine down, wait about 30 seconds and restart it. Do not just restart from within Windows.


BillyBob

 

kensquare

I forgot to add something that may happen.

If you REM out the lines in the config.sys you may ( or may not ) get some error messages when the Autoexec.bat is process.

They will come from the fact that the CDROM drivers were not loaded in the Config.sys so the CDROMS can not be assigned in the Autoexec.bat.

You can REM ( or delete ) the lines refering to D:MSCD001 thay have /L:X at the end. The X stands for the letter that would be assigned to the CDROM.

BillyBob

 

By running fdisk I mean going to start/run and typing "fdisk" without the quotes. Or do it at the DOS prompt. If fdisk gives you the option of changing drives (probably the last option) then do so because the 1st drive will be the one that's working. When you've changed drives, select the option to view disk information. This will tell you if you are partitioned on the other drive or not. If something other than a DOS drive is there, delete it. Then choose to create a primary DOS drive. Unless you want it in smaller partitions, choose to do it at the maximum size. Once that's done, exit fdisk, shut down the computer. When you boot up again, you should then be able to format the drive (It should be D:, I suppose. Make sure you have the right drive before formatting). I think all of this is best done from a boot up floppy, beginning with the original running of fdisk, but you can do it from Windows if you prefer.... You know of course that you'll lose all the data when you format in case you wanted to save any of your son's stuff. But it seems your well past that point by now....If you have any questions or doubts, just run fdisk first, find out if you do indeed have a drive that can be recognized, then check back here before you do anything further. One step at a time is safest, if you have any apprehension at all.

 

BillyBob - I remmed out the two lines you suggested and reinstalled the second hard drive. I got no error messages but I also got exactly the same results.

pstanhope - Yes I am apprehensive. One step at a time sounds good to me.

I did a start/run/fdisk and got a message that starts: "Your computer has a disk larger that 512mb. This version of windows includes improved support for large disks, resulting in more efficient use...blah..blah..blah................... Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N).......? [Y]