Author Topic: 2 Hard drives 1 computer (Read 535 times)

K98k · « **on:** December 25, 2002, 06:20:43 PM »

In my computer I have running a 80 GB hard drive and Win XP Pro. Sitting in a drawer is a 30 GB hard drive with Win 98SE and a boat load of files on it. Basically what I did was just remove the 30 gig and replace it with the 80 and installed XP Pro and other files.

Is there any simple way to install and utilize the 30 gig drive again while keeping the 80 gig win xp pro hard drive as the primary drive?

Dago · « **Reply #1 on:** December 25, 2002, 06:35:01 PM »

iceydee · « **Reply #2 on:** December 25, 2002, 06:56:11 PM »

look on the jumpers on the back of the harddrive. your 80gb drive should say Master, and your 30gb should say slave. Then on the cable there's 3 connectors. 1 for the controller, and 2 for harddrives, put the middle one on the 30gb drive and the other on the 80gb drive. And that's it... if you want to be able to boot win98 aswell you'll have to edit your XP boot manager. Don't remember how to do that, but it's not very difficult...

SLO · « **Reply #3 on:** December 25, 2002, 07:22:23 PM »

BOOT.INI.........i think...oh ya check BIOS too just in case....

Wilbus · « **Reply #4 on:** December 25, 2002, 08:11:30 PM »

What iceydee said. Make sure teh 80 GB is master and the 30 GB is slave.

All computers have possibilies to have atleast 2 hard drives in it. Just connect it and it should work. I have the same thing in my computer with a 60 and a 40.

swoopy · « **Reply #5 on:** December 25, 2002, 08:19:39 PM »

what iceydee said, i have two in mine but cant use one now it died.

AKIron · « **Reply #6 on:** December 25, 2002, 08:20:49 PM »

I'd keep the 30GB as master and put it on the same ide channel as your cdrom, make the cdrom drive slave. One reason for doing it this way is speed. If your 80GB is ATA100 or 66 and your 30GB is slower then putting them both on the same channel may slow the faster one down.

You control which is the boot drive within your bios.

capt. apathy · « **Reply #7 on:** December 25, 2002, 08:46:54 PM »

what Iron said.

I have a 20 set up as my primary drive (xp, drivers, and backups of important documents.

my 80 is for programs, doc's

each is on it's own channel (with cd-rom or cd-rw with it)

it seems much faster with one running the system and the other running the programs.

I'm far from an expert but it seems much faster

Eagler · « **Reply #8 on:** December 26, 2002, 06:15:11 AM »

thought Win98 had to be the "drive C" and WinXp went on "drive D"

that's the way mine is but I installed both from scratch, Win98 first then XP - both drives on their own ATA100 controller

capt. apathy · « **Reply #9 on:** December 26, 2002, 07:16:35 AM »

mine has xp on the c: drive and the larger drive is just formated under xp. it has no OS files loaded on it

iceydee · « **Reply #10 on:** December 26, 2002, 07:23:17 AM »

I agree with Iron... but that's only if the 30gb interface is slower. Since if you connect it with the cdrom, it will be slowed down by that....

iceydee · « **Reply #11 on:** December 26, 2002, 07:25:29 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Eagler
thought Win98 had to be the "drive C" and WinXp went on "drive D"

that's the way mine is but I installed both from scratch, Win98 first then XP - both drives on their own ATA100 controller

really? is win98 restricted to be on the first drive? I knew that you had to install win98 before XP if they were to be on the SAME drive, but not on different drives. I think the XP-bootmanager should be able to sort it out if you wanted 98 on the D: drive... not sure though. I only use LILO for that kind of stuff.

capt. apathy · « **Reply #12 on:** December 26, 2002, 07:47:25 AM »

I agree with Iron... but that's only if the 30gb interface is slower. Since if you connect it with the cdrom, it will be slowed down by that....

--------------------------

only if you use your cd drive alot while playing games. my cd-rw and dvd drives are mostly for loading data in and out. they don't get much use while gaming. (the only time I need to worry how fast my system is)

both my drives are the same speed. and the system deffinatly seems faster this way than when I had just the 1 drive.

K98k · « **Reply #13 on:** December 26, 2002, 08:37:16 AM »

Gents you are certainly all computer geniuses

. I'm gonna try it out and see what comes of it. The fact that it can be done makes it worth the try.

I'll keep y'all advised, thanks alot

AKIron · « **Reply #14 on:** December 26, 2002, 09:19:50 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by iceydee
I agree with Iron... but that's only if the 30gb interface is slower. Since if you connect it with the cdrom, it will be slowed down by that....

Really depends on the speed of the drives. If the 30GB drive is ata33 then it may be the same speed as the cdrom drive. I'll assume that the 80GB drive will get the most use and therefore think it best to have it's own channel.

Both Windows 98 and XP will want to boot from drive c:. This drive letter is not hard coded in the hardware but is determined by the firmware on the motherboard and/or scsi controller. I have a scsi drive with WinXP and an ide drive with Win98. To change the system to boot to Win98 I change the boot drive in the bios. That makes the ide drive c: and the scsi drive d:. The system then boots into Win98.

Beware though, certain drive configurations can really slow the boot time in WinXP. At one point I found that simply reversing the slave/master settings between two cdrom drives added over a minute to my boot time which somehow confused XP.