Install Old Hard Drive as Slave??
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Posted by on December 26, 2005, 7:56 pm
Please log in for more thread options I have an old hard drive from a windows 98 machine that I would like to install as a slave on my newer xp machine. The xp hard drive has two partitions: partition 1 has the system files and is labeled C with an NTFS file system. Partition 2 has the recovery files and is labeled D with a FAT32 file system. My newer (xp) machine is an HP and is about three years old. The old machine is about 7 years old and I believe it was a FAT32. Could I just simply set the drive on my new xp machine as master and install the old win98 drive as slave? There is a 40pin slot on my xp's ide cable for a slave. It's even marked "slave". I'm concerned about the machine booting with two different operating systems. I have no boot disk for the xp machine, just recovery cd's. I also assume the bios will automatically detect the old drive as a slave. I hope so because I'm not too confident working beneath windows. Also, the (xp) drive letters I have in windows explorer are A,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J. What letter would the slave drive be assigned? Any forseeable problems doing this? I mainly want my old hard drive on the new system to get some old documents and multimedia. Then I could possibly format it and use it to store multimedia. The old system will no longer boot because of a bad bios chip. Otherwise I'd just burn the files I want and transfer them. Anyway, any input is much appreciated. -Felder | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Grinder on December 26, 2005, 8:00 pm
Please log in for more thread options If you look on the HD that's already in your XP machine, you'll probably find that it's set to "CS"--meaning "Cable Select." Do the same for your old hard drive, power it, and plug it into the Slave connector on your cable. If the HD in your XP machine is set to "Master" or "Single," make sure it's set to "Master" and set the old drive to "Slave." You should be good to go. | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by kony on December 26, 2005, 10:44 pm
Please log in for more thread options On 26 Dec 2005 16:56:51 -0800, felderbush001@yahoo.com
wrote: >
>I have an old hard drive from a windows 98 machine that I would like to >install as a slave on my newer xp machine. The xp hard drive has two >partitions: partition 1 has the system files and is labeled C with an >NTFS file system. Partition 2 has the recovery files and is labeled D >with a FAT32 file system. My newer (xp) machine is an HP and is about >three years old. The old machine is about 7 years old and I believe it >was a FAT32. > >Could I just simply set the drive on my new xp machine as master and >install the old win98 drive as slave? yes, assuming you mean putting them both on same cable. Keep in mind that some HP systems have a couple vertical HDD mounting trays that may not cool the drives so well, even worse with 2 of them. This is one of the issues with small OEM systems that aren't necessarily sufficient for anything more than originally installed. >There is a 40pin slot on my xp's
>ide cable for a slave. It's even marked "slave". I'm concerned about >the machine booting with two different operating systems. It should boot to the master by default. After you add the new drive, if you didn't already have an entry in the bios to select the boot drive, IF you then had the ability to boot the slave drive it would be a selection in the bios. In other words, just hook it up and try it. When system boots for first time, be hitting <F8> rapidly, not waiting around
but immediately pressing it constantly so you're sure it
gets to that menu. The point to this is that it will bring up the OS boot menu, and you can then see which OS it was about to boot, AND if it where trying to boot Win98, you could then either reset the machine and enter bios to make changes, or at least boot to safe mode instead of having WIn98 try to plug-n-play your entire newer system. That's just hypothetical though, generally speaking if you hook up the old Win98 drive as slave it would by default still boot to the master drive until you specifically change a setting if there is one. > I have no
>boot disk for the xp machine, just recovery cd's. Personally, I'd google for some directions on making one. you may have most or all of the XP CD files on your hard drive right now, and if that's the case you might just need the boot sector for making a (semi-regular) OEM XP installation disc. I'd be anxious to do that if for no other reason, simply to wipe out all the crap that OEMs usually install and just start out with a clean, minimally bloated installation instead. Seems even if you uninstall that stuff you still have a few hundred MB additional clutter left behind not even counting system restore points. >I also assume the
>bios will automatically detect the old drive as a slave. I hope so >because I'm not too confident working beneath windows. Also, the (xp) >drive letters I have in windows explorer are A,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J. What >letter would the slave drive be assigned? That's a lot of drive letters for having only one drive, I presume you have a multi-in-one card reader installed or you just really, really like lots of partitions. Anyway, yes the added drive will be slave if put on the middle of the cable and/or jumpered as slave. It may automatically bump your card reader letters back to allow the parittions on the old (newly added) drive. you can go into computer management and assign the specific drive letters you want for any of those items, which XP will then remember (but DOS would still enumerate them the old-fashioned way, each primary FAT parition per disc then each extended FAT partition per disc. If you don't work with dos it won't be an issue, assuming the OEM restoration CD can discriminate should the need ever arise to use those discs again... which I would "assume" it can do but I don't guarantee it, the safest route would be to unplug the newly added old drive's data cable should you ever use the restoration CD again- it certainly can't write to a drive that isn't even connected at the time. >
>Any forseeable problems doing this? Generally speaking, no. Usually you just hook it up and it works. If you have a problem just doing that, unplug the drive again and report back exactly what happened. >
>I mainly want my old hard drive on the new system to get some old >documents and multimedia. Then I could possibly format it and use it to >store multimedia. The old system will no longer boot because of a bad >bios chip. Otherwise I'd just burn the files I want and transfer them. Sounds like a plan, though I'd be cautious about relying on an old drive (depending on how old) for data storage, as they all have a finite lifespan... in other words, 'tis best to still make backups on removable media. | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by on December 27, 2005, 12:22 am
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Kony, many thanks for the comprehensive reply! Since my old pc took a dump I now routinely back up my media and documents. Thanks again for the reply, Felder | ||||||||||||||||
> install as a slave on my newer xp machine. The xp hard drive has two
> partitions: partition 1 has the system files and is labeled C with an
> NTFS file system. Partition 2 has the recovery files and is labeled D
> with a FAT32 file system. My newer (xp) machine is an HP and is about
> three years old. The old machine is about 7 years old and I believe it
> was a FAT32.
>
> Could I just simply set the drive on my new xp machine as master and
> install the old win98 drive as slave? There is a 40pin slot on my xp's
> ide cable for a slave. It's even marked "slave". I'm concerned about
> the machine booting with two different operating systems. I have no
> boot disk for the xp machine, just recovery cd's. I also assume the
> bios will automatically detect the old drive as a slave. I hope so
> because I'm not too confident working beneath windows. Also, the (xp)
> drive letters I have in windows explorer are A,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J. What
> letter would the slave drive be assigned?
>
> Any forseeable problems doing this?
>
> I mainly want my old hard drive on the new system to get some old
> documents and multimedia. Then I could possibly format it and use it to
> store multimedia. The old system will no longer boot because of a bad
> bios chip. Otherwise I'd just burn the files I want and transfer them.
>
> Anyway, any input is much appreciated.