Prepping 2nd HD to act as C: drive

[Guest]

This is going to be a little convoluted but I hope somebody can give an answer.

 

 

 

My current C: [call him "Traveler" -- coincidentally the name of General Lee's horse, but who cares] drive is going to Hawaii with me. It contains all of my data and the current OS [Win98SE].

 

 

 

The D: [call him "Homeboy"] drive is currently empty-- nothing in it but a Recycle Bin icon -- and will be staying in the computer here in Thailand as the sole hard drive in the PC.

 

 

 

In the BIOS:

 

IDE Primary Master: Traveler

 

IDE Primary Slave: Homeboy

 

IDE Secondary Master: The CD-ROM drive

 

IDE Secondary Slave: none

 

 

 

The boot order is 1) CDROM, 2) C: [Traveler], 3) Floppy Drive

 

 

 

My goal is to get a working copy of Win98 on Homeboy and to keep Traveler in the PC so I can install applications from him onto Homeboy. Then once Homeboy is completely configured and I'm satisfied that the system will be stable, I want to put Traveler back as the primary system until I'm ready to go -- then at the last minute, yank Traveler out, pack him up, and leave Homeboy alone in the computer.

 

 

 

I want to do all this without any sort of boot manager or dual-OS set-up since their will only be two drives in the computer for a little while longer.

 

 

 

Now the questions-

 

 

 

If I open the case and switch the jumpers on each hard drive to reverse them from master-to-slave and slave-to-master, will Homeboy automatically become the C: drive? Or will I have to swap their cables also [and probably move them between bays because the cables are always too freaking short]? And will I have I have to touch the boot order again?

 

 

 

Will running Homeboy as the C: drive in any way affect the contents of Traveler and his OS? [Again, just disconnecting Traveler is not option because I need to access him -- he contains most of the installers for programs I want on Homeboy.]

 

 

 

Can anybody think of any other possible issues I might be overlooking?

 

 

 

I'm also pulling the video card to take with me [just so I can watch TV without buying a TV... ;-)] So Homeboy will be configured using the monitor connector on the motherboard. I'm guessing that leaving the video card in would make that motherboard connection unusable -- I get a non-working monitor if I use it now -- but if there's a workaround for that I'd rather not swap out the video card too many times. Shit breaks and the m-board is "hot" at all times [Thanks Acer/Intel].

 

 

 

Any thoughts on this little project are much appreciated.

 

 

[Guest]

Swapping the master-slave configuration must be enough. No cable switch hazzards.

 

 

 

Be careful with macrosoff: installing software on a C-Drive where also the D-Drive contains a full bootable and installed windows version left me with a system where at the end of the day neither disk would run alone anymore, both systems where f*cked up by macrosoff. However this was windows NT (You know, the more reliable system)

 

Better to protect any damage or changes in your D:\WIN98 folder by backing it completely up using ZIP or something so you can restore the original.

 

 

 

Better even to make the 'new c:' bootable with Win98 without the 'old c', then connect the 'old c' and copy all install packages across, disconnect the 'old c' and then install the software.

 

 

[BaronTT]

Yes, you asked a complicated question. I used to do this type of change quite often.

 

 

 

You can have 2 drives that each have a complete operating system on them. I used to do that so that if my primary drive failed, I could swicth over to my secondary rather easily.

 

 

 

There might be some SW out there that might help. Like Partition Magic. I haven't looked at a recent version, it might have what you need.

 

 

 

Unless you formatted homeboy as a primary partition (bootable) originally, it's going to be very messy. Was Homeboy ever a boot drive? If so, then you're probably OK!

 

 

 

Simply switching BIOS and jumpers (M/S) won't do the trick unless Homeboy has a primary partition on it. If Homeboy doesn't have a bootable partition, you'll need to reformat it with the /S parameter. But that will erase all of the data!

 

 

 

Several steps involved...

 

 

 

If you have additional info, such as there are 2 partitions (Drive letters assigned) on both Traveler and Homeboy, that would give me a hint as to your setup.

 

 

 

I'll write more later...

[Guest]

Here's what I've done so far.

 

 

 

Opened the case, removed the ribbon and power from my old C: Traveler.

 

 

 

Changed the jumper on Traveler to slave [just because I was there] and changed Homeboy to master.

 

 

 

Then booted up from Win98 CD-ROM. Win98 installed beautifully on Homeboy -- whatever magic happened made Homeboy a primary partition.

 

 

 

Homeboy now boots perfectly -- I've gone back to the hardware CDs and gotten all the motherboard and sound junk in place. It's running fine as a 3Gb 5400 rpm 33Mhz drive can hope to.

 

 

 

Right now I'm patching Windows and updating with WindowsUpdate, etc. Going to let that run while I go get groceries.

 

 

 

So, Traveler is sitting in there disconnected. Homeboy is living large as the C: drive.

 

 

 

What happens when I reconnect Traveler -- last it knew it was the C: drive holding the boot volume? Remember, it's jumperd as a slave now. Do I need to go into the BIOS and designate is as the slave on the Primary IDE?

[ALHOLK]

Hi!

 

 

 

Partition Magic, at leas the later versions, come with a resonably powerfull boot manager named Boot Magic that would solve his problem. We use this at work to create Linux/WindowsXP dual boot systems. However he did state that he doesn't want to install a boot manager so it won't help him.

 

 

 

regards

 

 

 

ALHOLK

 

 

[BaronTT]

That's great that Win98 automatically fixed up Homeboy. I lot easier than when I had to do all of that manually.... That's very, very good.

 

 

 

Anyway, you say you already changed the jumpers on the drives? Good. Just to be doubly safe to ensure than the Op System knows which is the boot drive, put Homeboy on the end of the IDE ribbon cable, instead of Traveler. So the drive closest to the Motherboard on the cable is Traveler.

 

 

 

(There are 2 basic ways to designate which is master and which is slave. 1st way is jumpering to "M" and "S". Second way is to jumper both drives to "CS", or Cable Select, in which case, Physical location on the cable determines which is which. Drive furthest from the Monthorboard and thus nearest the end of the cable is Master.)

 

 

 

Most of the time, the BIOS default is to let the BIOS figure out what type of drives are sitting on the IDE cables. In that case, when the PC is turned on, the PC's BIOS will figure out that you've switched the hard drives. So it'll fggure out Homeboy's parameters for the first, boot drive, and Traveler's parameters for the second, "just another drive". So you don't really need to do anything. PROBABLY

 

 

 

If the BIOS is not set to 'Automatic' for the drives, you'll have to go into the BIOS and set the parameters for the 2 hard disks. The parameters are usually found on the drives themselves,but in this case, the BIOS already has that info for drive one and drive 2. You'll need to write down what is there now for drive 1 and drive 2, and then swicth the settings. But I doubt that you'd have to go through all of this 'cause it's usually set to automatic.

 

 

 

Bottom line.. in your case, it sounds like you don't have to do anything more. Just fire up the machine. It should all happen automatically.

 

 

 

If you have any trouble, you can PM me and I'll send you my handphone number....

[BaronTT]

A couple of follow up comments....

 

 

 

Having bootable partitions on multiple drives isn't a problem at all. It may create a 'funny' configuration if you have multiple partitions on the drives. Funny "unusual", but not a problem. That's because the OpSystem will assign drive letters first to the bootable drives and then to the non-bootable ones. So if you had 2 partitions on both your drives and only the first drive had a bootable partition, Drives C and D would be assigned to the Master drive and E and F to the Slave. It the second drive had a bootable partition, Bootable on Master would be C, then bootable Slave would be D, then non-bootable Master would be E, then non-bootable Slave would be F.

 

 

 

BTW, Master and Slave refer to their relationship to each other, when they're on the same 'Port', as in IDE cable in this case. It doesn't really refer to it being the bootable vs non-bootable drive. For example, if you put one drive on each of the 2 IDE ports (and thus seperate cables), you'd set them both to 'Master'. (I hope this statement didn't confuse things.)

[Guest]

No, didn't confuse things. I already was pretty sure that you could have a master-slave relationship on each IDE -- max 4 drives in this case as I've got two.

 

 

 

I'm feeling pretty confident about this whole enterprise. It got me over the hump to also flash my BIOS tonight. Went okay, though I didn't bother with a floppy [update .exe and .bin straight into C: and then reboot into command prompt... Hey, it either works it doesn't, right?]

 

 

 

Now, all I have to do tommorow is to open the case again, reconnect the ribbon onto Traveler [and the power -- forgot that last time and had a "d'oh!" when no drives worked...].

 

 

 

From there I'm hoping it's a slam-dunk. I'm thinking that it doesn't even matter which disk boots. The only reason for having them both active at the same time now is to get files from one onto the other.

 

 

 

If Homeboy boots as C:, I'll run the installers from Traveler and they'll install on Homeboy. If Traveler boots as C:, I'll just copy the installers to Homeboy then disconnect Traveler again and reboot.

 

 

 

My only lingering fear is that running both disks simultaneously with the same OS will cause changes to the system files on the non-boot disk. Would really suck to have them turn into bizarre Siamese twins, joined at the user.dat...

 

 

 

I think that even if that happened I could just reinstall Win98 over the corrupted version and be right as rain. I've done that before and come out okay with all applications and data present and accounted for, although it's another 2-4 hour bog fixing up all the drivers and patches again.

 

 

 

Thanks again BaronTT and all for your advice and counsel in this trying time. And if you don't see me posting for a few days, you know I screwed the pooch. ;-)

[Guest]

I've purchased 2 new drives this year & both ( 1 Maxtor & 1 WD ) came with software for transferring data from the old drive to the new. ?

 

 

 

If they're both fdisked/formatted to be 'boot' the slave will auto be D: withour moving any jumpers, just having it on the proper cable, even if you have your current C: is partitioned into multi drive partitions.

 

& The factory probably fdisked / formatted the new drive to be a boot disk.

 

When you remove the current C: ( vagabond ) then the current D: ( homey ) will auto be the boot drive.

 

 

 

I have my C: fdisk partioned so that the C: / win partition can get weird without effecting the programs & data. I can fixdisk C: without effecting the D: ( Programs ), E:(Data), or F:(Cache) partitions on the same Maxtor drive.

 

+ ALL the data on one drive makes backups sooooo easy!

 

 

 

When I added a 40gig disk of MP3s ( 8354 songs! ) a friend made for me to the mix it was fdisked at the WD factory to be a boot drive ( & we missed that detail! ) so it auto became the D: drive & my D: became E:, & E; F:, Et AL & fuched all that up.

 

 

 

We removed the new 40 giger fdisked / formatted it to be non boot & recopied all the MP3s.. & it is now my G: & all is well... or as well as things can be with a microsoft OS!

 

 

 

2 identical OSs on the same computer ought to be a new & enlightening experience!

 

:-o

[adikgede]

What happens when I reconnect Traveler -- last it knew it was the C: drive holding the boot volume? Remember, it's jumperd as a slave now. Do I need to go into the BIOS and designate is as the slave on the Primary IDE?

 

 

 

 

 

From what you have said Both C: (primary master on your box) and D: (primary slave on your box)have something to bootstrap the computer written on their master boot record. The bios should not be affected by that because the bios does its work before disks are read. Windows might have a problem though, and if it does you will need to fdisk D: and toggle the bootable flag (to off), but this probably won't be the source for trouble. Having a boot manager and some boot floppies might not be a bad idea if you get in the habit of doing this. noor would a pair of pull out HD trays, then all you have to do is jumper the drives to CS (cable select) If the boot manager GRUB works on windoze only systems that would be pretty cherry (it should, search for it at freshmeat.net) If you had GRUB on a floppy you could create several boot configurations, and never have to worry if you hosed your MBR on one of the HDs. GRUB is really good because you can put a bootable partition beyond the 1024MB mark of a disk, the settings are all in human readable/editable files and it has an interactive mode.

 

If you are mirroring there is probably a program like Drive Copy that has a functional evaluation version. If you are planning to load one drive into another computer while on the road be sure to bring your device drivers and and the windoze installation CD.

 

 

 

An alternative (for mirroring) would be to get a mini linux or unix distro on a floppy or cd. The following should work but its been about five years since I have done it.

 

 

 

1: under windows format D: with the S switch

 

 

 

2. boot your unix/linux floppy or cdrom (the following assumes linux)

 

toggle the bootable flag on the primary slave

 

%fdisk /dev/hdb #follow the instructions

 

make a place to mount your windoze volumes

 

%mkdir /mnt/C /mnt/D

 

mount your windoze volumes

 

%mnt /dev/hda1 -t vfat /mnt/C

 

%mnt /dev/hdb1 -t vfat /mnt/D

 

make a copy of the contents of C on to D (including any errors unfortunatley)

 

%cp -r /mnt/C/* /mnt/D/

 

I think shutdown does this but for good measure

 

%sync

 

%sync

 

turn it off

 

%shutdown -h now

 

 

 

reset your jumpers and reboot.