Multiple Disk Drives in same computer

[Das Boot]

I have two disk drives in one computer. How can I see them both to choose one for use. I am now switching the slave/master settings but there MUST be an easier way than that! Is there?

TY

[Sylvander]

Hello Das Boot

I have five disk drives in my PC.

Two Hard Disk Drives
One CD-RW
One CD-Rom
One Floppy Disk Drive

My point is that there are MANY TYPES of disk drive and you need to be more specific.
Are these two Hard Disk Drives perhaps and is it your intention to make BOTH available for use.
Do you intend to select [the larger] one as the master and the other [smaller one] as the slave. The PC will put the operating system on the Primary Master drive and name it "C:".
This assumes that you put a single partition only on each drive.
I am unaware of any easier way to specify the drive designations.

[Reid]

If you want to boot with either drive, NickLock (http://www.nicklock.com/) is a $20.95 hardware solution. I built my own and it works fine as long as the BIOS is set to autodetect the drives.

[Das Boot]

AH, yes Sylvander. A wise observation. Indeed there are many types of drives and for me to state in such a blanketed way "Drive" I may as well have been speaking of salad oil...

I have two hard drives, one with Win98 and the other with Win95. Both have some great tools on them and I do not feel schooled enough to load the one onto the other. Though it has been an idea I have had... How could I do that? I suppose then I could just partition the drive and be done with it.. Even so, I would like to have multiple HARD drives in the same computer and be able to access any of my choosing.

Thank you for righting my bad syntaxxx!

[Sylvander]

Hello Das Boot

Whatever you do, don't attempt to put two operating systems within one partition.
You could have two operating systems within two different partitions/drives and dual boot, but this is a topic I know little about so I'll leave it to others. I remember reading about this within "Partition Magic" when I had it installed on my PC.

By the way, I hope these operating systems were installed within the PC hardware setup as it now exists and not within some other setup.
Be very careful that you don't get too smart, too complicated and end up in trouble.

Sorry for repeating myself but I take it you know that the PC will normally boot to the operating system on the C: drive, and that designation is given to the primary partition on the drive jumpered as master and connected to the primary IDE controller.

[Das Boot]

Sylvander,

[Das Boot]

Sylvander,

Thank you for your insight, and repeat yourself as often as possible it is the root of learning! Also being 42 has taken its toll on some of my synaps!

Actually the computer boots to A: then c: and thats a cool thing! Unfortunately I am (qualified) (on paper) as an A+ tech. I went to school for 900hrs of computer diag and networking but really learned little. I too know of Partition Magic and have it in disks for a fix-it company I was going to start back a while ago. Such is life. So now I turn to those of y'all who did do something with the learning you "retained" and are willing to help us other poor SOB's (speaking for myself) out who didn't!

I understand also the part dealing with the operating systems being generated with the same BIOS or on the same motherboard. Is this what you are speaking of? I do not think anything detrimental happened when I hooked it all together and ran the new Hard Drive with the 95 OS on board. It is just a hassel changing the slave/master config and wanted to know if there was anyone with some information who could help me.

Some of the tools on the new drive are no longer accessable elsewhere and I need to keep them. I know also of a "NULL" cable that can be made to 'straight-line' info from computer to computer (HD to HD). I suppose I could drop the new HD into another box and do that.

[classicsoftware]

Simple steps to install a second hard drive in your system:

1)Leave the "old" drive as the master drive on the primary IDE channel.

2) Install the "new" drive as the primary drive on the secondary IDE channel. (You may have to unplug the CD-ROM)

3) Connect the ribbon & power cables. & reboot.

4) the bios should detect both drives.

5) Power off computer & use software supplied from the drive manufacturuer or downloaded from their web site.

6) With the software you can format/partition the "new" drive and transfer all of the information from the "old" drive to the "new" drive.

7) Once Accomplished. Install the "new" drive as the master on the primary IDE channel and the "old" disk as the slave on the primary IDE channel. Re-connect the CD-ROM ribbon cable if detached in step 2.

8) You may have to fdisk & or re-format the "old" drive once the new drive is installed & working ok.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Problems to watch out for:

1) You have the right ribbon cable. If your system is older, you may need an 80 wire cable (often included with the drive) to communicate with the motherboard.

2) The jumper settings on the drive are correct. Consult the documentation with the drive OR the drive manufacturer's web site.

3) Drive letter assignment may be confusing. In the MS world drive letters are assigned as follows:

A. The primary DOS partition on the master drive.
B. The primary DOS partition on the slave drive.
C. The extended DOS partition on the master drive.
D.The extended DOS partition on the salve drive.

If each drive has only 1 partition this will not be a problem.

4) The drive ribbon cables are connected properly. That means pin 1 the colored strip on the ribbon cable is closest to the power plug. Again, consult the documentation with the drive OR the drive manufacturer's web site.

[Sylvander]

Hello Das Boot

To expand: [bear in mind my knowledge is imperfect]

When you run the Windows "setup.exe" programme to install the Windows operating system, this detects all the hardware that is fitted within this PC. When you boot windows for the first time it detects the fact that the hardware is fitted and installs any drivers that come with Windows and asks you for the others which do not. All the appropriate configuration settings would then be made and you would have a working system.

But be aware of the important fact that all of this [which is on the hard drive] is specifically matched to the particular hardware combination which exists on this PC. Switch it to another PC with different hardware and you have a software/hardware mismatch.

If you used the drive with Win95 and these useful tools you could upgrade it to Windows 98.
Would that exclude different tools included on the HDD with Windows 98 installed?

I would expect the BIOS to have all the settings necessary to enable it to deal appropriately with the hardware fitted on that PC. Once that is in place it will be capable of carrying out the instructions handed down from the applications, through the operating system via the drivers.

[iisbob]

if you wish to have 98 and 95 on the same system use a tool such as Ranish Partition Manager (http://www.ranish.com/part/) to hide the 98 primary from the 95 primary partition. Since both of these OS's are based on DOS originally, they only allow you to have 1 primary partition.

Just boot to Ranish and hide the 98 partition when you want 95; do the same when you want the 95 one.

[RKBA]

Well Das Boot and Sylvander, I have ten disk drives in my PC. :D

Five Hard Disk Drives
One CD-RW
One CD-Rom
One Floppy Disk Drive
One 250 MB Zip Drive

The 5 hard drives total 250 GB. Four of them are on the four ATA channels. The floppy is plugged into the dedicated floppy drive connector, and the rest are on the four IDE channels. Hmmm... I just realized I could accommodate one more floppy drive. Unfortunately all my front panel drive bays are used up...Oh well.

Two of my hard drives are in "mobile racks" (http://www.xpcgear.com/mobileracks.html), and can be easily removed or exchanged when the computer is powered off. They each have key switches so they can also be left in the drive bay but disconnected from power when not in use. I use the two drives in the mobile racks primarily for backup and normally leave them powered off, but sometimes have all five online at the same time.

Since it would certainly be more convenient than swapping cables, you could put your Win95 and Win98 drives in mobile racks and physically swap them each time you want to switch OS's - but although I've plugged them in and unplugged them many times without problems it's not something I would recommend on a regular basis because eventually the physical shock might damage them. The mobile racks have their own connectors, so you needn't worry about wearing out the connectors at least (although you might have to replace the mobile racks).

If you have enough room on one of the drives for all the data, I like iisbob's suggestion best (thanks for the tip on the free Ranish partition manager, iisbob!). You would have to create two partitions on the boot drive of course. If you don't have room, just buy a new hard drive - they're dirt cheap these days. You can get a 5400RPM, 60 GB Western Digital hard drive for $70 (http://www.pricewatch.com/1/26/2274-1.htm), though I'd recommend spending another ten bucks and getting a 7200RPM model.

-- Ron

P.S.

Das Boot, if you don't mind telling - what are these software "tools" that you need to keep? Perhaps if you told us what they are, we could help you relocate them to the other OS.

[Reid]

RKBA,
I use removeable drive trays too, and installed switches to control the MA and SL jumpers so that the drives do not have to be physically swapped.
http://home1.gte.net/res1azio/Tray1.jpg
http://home1.gte.net/res1azio/tray2.jpg

[RKBA]

Reid,

Interesting. One of my removable drives is on an ATA channel and the other is on an EIDE channel, so such a switch wouldn't do me much good in my present configuration. One thing I've often wondered about is whether the tray interferes with cooling. Although I've sometimes left mine on for a couple of days at a time without problems, I wonder if they could be left on all the time without adverse effects? Mine is an aluminum tray with a little tiny fan in the back to help circulate air, but even so there isn't much room between the top and bottom covers.

I was wondering if you leave yours on all or most of the time your computer is powered up, and if so have you ever had trouble with the hard drives in the drive tray's that might have been caused by overheating?

Thanks,

-- Ron

[Reid]

The drives do run warmer than I like in this current setup. When I had them in a case that had only exhaust fans, they ran cooler because air was being pulled through the front slots. The trays are rated for 5400 RPM drives because anything faster would get too hot. Another limitation with the ones I have is that since they only have 40-conductor cables, they only support up to ATA-33. I do not have much need for removeable trays now that all the computers in the house are networked and I do not need to move big files by putting them on a hard drive. I may just leave one bay in one of the systems and plug in a large drive when I want to save Ghost backup images and store them elsewhere.

I have put drive switches on a blank bay panel when the drives are mounted internally.

[Das Boot]

RKBA, most beautiful to have so many drives! I too have learned to use the removable ware and do believe there is a continued swap condition that soon retires your hard drives after "shocking" them.

The tools are specific to my military job and I have no disks to replace them. While the "tools" are out of date they suffice for my work load.

I am a "high-speed" special ops medical element trained not to fix computers but the highly trained special warefare elements known as combat controlers. Living, breathing humans.

I have an array of software that is on one disk and a not so big second disk with other gear I use in the field.

I beleive the swapping is what I remebered from the past as how to use more than one disk... but I keep thinking there was another way...

the pictures presented jarrd my memory and I remembered the key's of which I still have two from class.
I do wish I had had more of an understanding of all the materiel that was poured on us during the 900hrs of instruction.

A "null modem" cable is one other way. That was what I was trying to say when I stated earlier about a "null cable." Using a cable to transfer info from one disk [computer] to another. I even learned how to make one (they run about 28-30 dollars at R.S.), probably easier to buy as all the hardware needed to make one costs more than the cable!

Thank you all for the terrific ideas. I may try some of them and I will let you know what happens.

[JJON]

Originally posted by classicsoftware
Simple steps to install a second hard drive in your system:

1)Leave the "old" drive as the master drive on the primary IDE channel.

2) Install the "new" drive as the primary drive on the secondary IDE channel. (You may have to unplug the CD-ROM)

3) Connect the ribbon & power cables. & reboot.

4) the bios should detect both drives.

5) Power off computer & use software supplied from the drive manufacturuer or downloaded from their web site.

6) With the software you can format/partition the "new" drive and transfer all of the information from the "old" drive to the "new" drive.

7) Once Accomplished. Install the "new" drive as the master on the primary IDE channel and the "old" disk as the slave on the primary IDE channel. Re-connect the CD-ROM ribbon cable if detached in step 2.

8) You may have to fdisk & or re-format the "old" drive once the new drive is installed & working ok.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Problems to watch out for:

1) You have the right ribbon cable. If your system is older, you may need an 80 wire cable (often included with the drive) to communicate with the motherboard.

2) The jumper settings on the drive are correct. Consult the documentation with the drive OR the drive manufacturer's web site.

3) Drive letter assignment may be confusing. In the MS world drive letters are assigned as follows:

A. The primary DOS partition on the master drive.
B. The primary DOS partition on the slave drive.
C. The extended DOS partition on the master drive.
D.The extended DOS partition on the salve drive.

If each drive has only 1 partition this will not be a problem.

4) The drive ribbon cables are connected properly. That means pin 1 the colored strip on the ribbon cable is closest to the power plug. Again, consult the documentation with the drive OR the drive manufacturer's web site. I just received a replacement pc for my old one from Dell. I have to send the old pc back, but I need my os and files and drivers off the old one. The old one is 500mgh and the new one is 866. the old one is a 100 and the new is 133. What do I have to do with the old one to put it in the new one to transfer my contents. I know a few things, but not a lot. Do I do just what you told Das Boot? I suppose I will need special program to do that.

[Sylvander]

I was thinking of a way which [if it works, and I think it will] would be easier and less prone to error due to complexity.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx
METHOD 1
If you have a system for making and restoring backups on both PC’s:
1. Make backups of all the partitions on your old HDD.
2. Restore them to the same partitions on the new HDD.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx

Can it be that simple?

a. NEW PARTITIONS DO NOT MATCH OLD PARTITIONS
Well you might have MULTIPLE partitions on the old and only ONE on the new.
The software would almost certainly allow you to restore all the backups to the C: partition.
But then the registry settings that point to programmes on the D: E: or F: partitions would fail to work when you restore the programmes to the C: drive.

b. NEW PC IS NOT IDENTICAL TO OLD PC HARDWARE
There is the problem that the system of software restored to the new HDD has drivers and their registry settings that were made to successfully operate the old PC’s hardware [and other things].
To set the Operating system up to work with the new hardware [which it is different to the old], before ever you boot into Windows on that PC, you need to run “Windows Setup” to detect, initialise and configure the O/S and install new drivers for this new hardware.


METHOD 2
Is the method outlined by “classicsoftware”.

c. Problem b above also applies here.
d. I’d be inclined to have:
Old HDD = Primary Master
New HDD = Primary Slave
And switch jumpers after the “switch off” following the move from the old to the new.
e. Make certain that ALL the drives are set to “Auto” in the BIOS Setup [“Dynamic Auto Detection and Configuration” of drive parameters] so that when you switch the jumpers and/or cable connections the change is detected and catered for by the BIOS.