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My current machine only has a 20GB HD and I’m at about 10% free space. I have a new 120GB drive coming in (WD 120 GB WD1200JB 7200 RPM 8MB BUFFER ATA 100 HARD DRIVE) but I’m not clear on how I should address the install.

OS: XP Pro (SP-2)
Processer: 2.4MHz
RAM: 1GB

I suppose my question is what I should do about the Master/Slave issue. It seems a waste to just trash the 20GB and replace it with the 120GB, but I’m not certain what config is the best. I have some rather large programs (i.e. XP Developer) and wonder what might be done as far as what files would go on which drive; I only presume it would be simplest to have the original drive (20GB) be the boot drive. I use a Iomega removable hard drive (REV 35GB) for data and system back-ups. With two hard drives I wonder how that would effect the SYSTEM back-up strategy. Also, is it as simple as cut/paste files from one drive to the other? New territory for me here; never done any of this before.

Any help/advise/input appreciated.

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What I usually do is to start with a fresh install on the new, blank drive as master. The existing drive is re-jumpered to be the slave. After installation of the OS and base applications, I can work on transferring over all the data and settings from the old drive at my liesure. This saves me the “backup all your data step.” Makes me feel better, because I _always_ forget something.

After that, I wipe the old drive and use it to hold the windows swap files, and the backup.

I do like AlanMiller’s paritioning scheme too. I may follow his lead next time I get the idea to go and reorganize my hard drive.

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Jim:

Thanks for the input. I won’t get to this until the weekend, but your comments have been printed for reference.

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Jim:

Thanks for the input. I won’t get to this until the weekend, but your comments have been printed for reference.

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Hi Jim

---

I wipe the old drive and use it to hold the windows swap files, and the backup.

---

That brings up some interesting points. I used to adopt this approach as “obviously” the best choice a few years back, until one of our techs pointed out a couple of things:

1) HD speeds have leaped dramatically in recent years, so the perceived advantages of having the swap file running to a dedicated (physical) HD might be offset by the inherently slower speed of the old HD. I’ve opted for the advantages of a swapfile on a dedicated partition, but on the faster new primary HD.

2) It’s even possible that the very presence of the old “slow” HD on the same IDE might slow down everything, including the speedy new HD. For instance, plugging an “old” 40 pin HD into a “new” 80-wire cable might slow everything up on that IDE. Mind you, I use this config and I’m quite happy with it – I’m not prepared to junk a perfectly good HD, and lose the advantage of a (hot swap) slave without significant monetary compensation .

Alan

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(Edited by bfxtrfcmgr on 15-Sep-04 06:26. Added Backup/Restore procedure attachment)

Alan:

I just read some of your replies to other posts in this thread (good reason to check an active thread even if you don’t get a direct reply) and wonder if maybe I might be better off just installing the 120GB and forgetting about the 20GB (at least for now). I don’t know enough about partitioning to appreciate what real benefits there are, or even if that is something I could address later. In any case, and after having read through some of the documentation on Ghost for REV, I wonder if I might simply do a System Backup to my REV drive (bootable) and restore to the new HD. In that case I would completely remove the old HD (5400rpm) and just have the new HD (7200rpm) as master. I “presume” I could add the old HD back as slave on the primary channel at a later date. What I really don’t get is the out-of-box “format” of the new HD. My current drive is using NTFS file system so, I again presume, the System Backup REV disk is in that format also. When Ghost promises that a mirror image of the old drive is restored; do they only mean to the drive that the image was taken from, or to a new drive as well? It seems the latter is true, but I’m not learned enough to know for certain.

My greatest concern is that I be able to accomplish this over the weekend without “incident”. This machine runs my entire business; so if I’m not up and running Monday morning I’m out of business (thus the current pesky paranoia).

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I don’t see any problem with your (understandably conservative) approach. As I said, I know nothing of XP and NTFS issues. But generally, so long as you don’t wipe your existing HD, you’re still in business, so to speak. Even if there’s a great string of foulups over the weekend, you can still reconnect your old HD to the IDE cable and you’re back where you started. I wouldn’t even physically remove the old HD – just pull the IDE cable out.

Did your HD come with a CD of disk utilities? It might be worth checking these to see what they can do for you e.g. format to NTFS. It may also carry non-destructive partitioning software. What I would do is to make a boot floppy from your existing installation (if you can with XP?) and ensure that it carries the appropriate version of FDISK and FORMAT to do the job you need, and provides CD reader functionality. The Ultimate Boot Disk I mentioned earlier is also worth downloading and imaging to floppy. Then make sure they actually boot . It might also be worth printing out any instructions etc. you might need to use them.

With regard to partitioning, this can all be done further down the track. The Partition Magic software I recommended (and there may be a similar utility that comes with your new HD software) is a Windows program anyway, so you still need to start with Windows loaded on one big C: partition. I’d regard partitioning as a refinement, but it becomes harder if you want to move installed programs, say, to a new partition. The longer you leave it, the more problematic a task it could become.

I know it seems “scarey” the first time you do it, but so long as your original HD stays intact, you should be laughing!

Alan

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Alan:

?
(In the emotional spectrum, I wonder how far laughing is from crying?)

Thanks again Alan for encouraging me to move forward (he said cowering in the corner). I know this must seem ridiculously simple to most, but as a first-timer I’m still a bit apprehensive (6’2″ @ 230lbs doesn’t help much with this issue). However, as a long-time Access Lounger, I’ve learned that Woody’s has some of the best advise you can find anywhere (including so-called tech support). I still think this is one of the most amazing places on the web; totally selfless people volunteering their experience and support to others without the slightest compensation for their considerable efforts. Try to find something like that anywhere else!

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Alan’s already said this, but I just wanted to add an “amen” about partitioning software. There are some computer users for whom such a product would (might) be out of the question, but for anyone who’s a “medium” level, support yourself kinda computer person, having something like Partition Magic (or another product) in your toolbag is or should be a pretty high priority. Whether it’s initial setup of a new drive or the ability to make later changes to your structure, there’s no loss of data and the concept is pretty easy to deal with, once you’ve gotten your feet wet. With the demise of PowerQuest as you can tell from other threads, I’ve switched from Partition Magic to the Acronis Disk Director suite, but …..

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Big Al:

Thanks for the input. I actually already have Partition Magic 8.0 (sort of). By that I mean to say that it was a download purchase onto my dual-drive laptop (back when PowerQuest had it). The problem now is that Symantec purchased the rights to it and the unlock codes no longer work for re-downloading the software. I contacted Symantec (as well as DigitalRiver) to get it resolved, but it was more than the rep could handle; the issue being referred to a higher level (this was yesterday, I haven’t heard back from them, yet).

I think one of the concepts my little mind is having a problem with is how partitioning can occur on a new drive prior to install. Uh, I didn’t put that quite right. Let’s see. . .

The existing drive is the only drive on the primary as Master (secondary channel has CD/RW and REV drive)
Do System Backup with Ghost to REV drive (bootable)
Shut down system and remove old HD
Install new HD as Master and boot from REV
Restore from REV to new HD.

I understand there is a Slave position on the primary channel (not currently used), but don’t know how to go about using it to partition the new HD (or even if that’s what I’m supposed to do). Kind of learning on the run here. If I were to do that, I don’t get how you can have the original HD ( C: ) as Master and then try to partition the Slave (new HD)as C:; and then swap their positions later and re-name? I’m probably making things worse than they really are.

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Well, let me see if I can say something lucid and not too confusing here, assuming you get the problem with PM 8 straightened out. You’ve apparently already taken the most important step if you have a backup already made. Partitioning and preparing a drive is kinda separate from the assignment of drive LETTERS. If you connect a new drive to your system, say for example in the slave position of the primary channel, run something like PM and partition that drive to the number and size partitions you want, that drive will be assigned letter(s) dependent on its current “connection.” If you then shutdown and remove the master drive, change the jumper(s) on the new drive to master, and reboot the system, the new drive will then have drive letters assigned to it, starting with C: and so on, depending on what else is still connected to the primary and secondary chains. One thing you MAY have to do is to use PM to make the boot partition on the new drive “ACTIVE.” You should then be able to restore your backup to that C: drive of that new device. Have I confused the issue too much?

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Big Al:

I sure hope I don

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[indent]

---

…Backup is from single un-partitioned drive; trying to restore to multi-partition drive…

---

[/indent] All the backup/restore programs that I’ve used don’t care WHERE you put a restore, but I always admit I haven’t used Ghost for several years, so I hope it’s the same. When you start a restore, the program “should” ask you for the destination partition, hence drive letter, and it shouldn’t care if there are other partitions on that same physical drive. Some programs, during the restore startup, will ask if you want to resize the destination partition or leave it alone, i.e. the greater space will be left empty. Just be careful to read the prompts and don’t click too fast.

Edited to add: [indent]

---

…WD 120 GB WD1200JB 7200 RPM 8MB BUFFER ATA 100 HARD DRIVE…

---

[/indent] This is what you said you ordered, not SATA. And here’s the WD descriptive link.

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Al:

Boy oh boy, ever feel like you’re running a day-care center?

I went back and checked my order, the packing slip, and the drive itself. The order, packing slip, and drive say Model WD1200JB; the link to WD you gave me (thanks) is also for that same model. On the drive label it says: Western Digital WD Caviar Enhanced IDE Hard Drive

S/N: WCAEK1553069
MDL: WD1200JB-00EVA0
DCM: HSBHNTJCH
WD P/N: WD1200JB-00EVA0

I went to System Information after hearing about “controler” and found: “0x0000FFA0-0x0000FFAF Intel® 82801DB Ultra ATA Storage Controller – 24CB” in I/O info. If that’s the right controller I presume ATA is the right type, but why does the drive itself say “Enhanced IDE Hard Drive” (even though the model number is correct for the link you gave)?

Just to keep things interesting, the cable that came with the drive has eighty wires (yes, I counted them) and forty pins.

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Al:

Boy oh boy, ever feel like you’re running a day-care center?

I went back and checked my order, the packing slip, and the drive itself. The order, packing slip, and drive say Model WD1200JB; the link to WD you gave me (thanks) is also for that same model. On the drive label it says: Western Digital WD Caviar Enhanced IDE Hard Drive

S/N: WCAEK1553069
MDL: WD1200JB-00EVA0
DCM: HSBHNTJCH
WD P/N: WD1200JB-00EVA0

I went to System Information after hearing about “controler” and found: “0x0000FFA0-0x0000FFAF Intel® 82801DB Ultra ATA Storage Controller – 24CB” in I/O info. If that’s the right controller I presume ATA is the right type, but why does the drive itself say “Enhanced IDE Hard Drive” (even though the model number is correct for the link you gave)?

Just to keep things interesting, the cable that came with the drive has eighty wires (yes, I counted them) and forty pins.

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[indent]

---

…the cable that came with the drive has eighty wires (yes, I counted them) and forty pins…

---

[/indent] That’s Ultra ATA for you. I think you’re alright and I’d warm up the coffee pot for the weekend’s work! You might find something of interest in reading this page. And considering Alan’s post above about this, I also have a couple of drives in this machine connected with an 80-wire cable where one of the drives is an Ultra ATA 7200 rpm and the other is not. If there’s any speed degradation, I’ve never been able to discern it. Good luck.

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I hope my mention of mixing drive speeds was not taken as “gospel”. I’m no hardware expert, just the messenger – please don’t shoot . I actually have an old/ new mix of HDs running myself, and it was one of the techs at work (when I was asking about the 64 or 80 or whatever ribbon cable) who mentioned it as a “possible” side effect. IIRC, he also said something about a warning diagnostic message if such degradation was occurring. From whence I know not, but it never appeared so I fumbled on regardless and I’m happy with the result. As he said, you can always pull the plug on the old drive at any time, once you’ve got what you need from it.

Alan

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I hope my mention of mixing drive speeds was not taken as “gospel”. I’m no hardware expert, just the messenger – please don’t shoot . I actually have an old/ new mix of HDs running myself, and it was one of the techs at work (when I was asking about the 64 or 80 or whatever ribbon cable) who mentioned it as a “possible” side effect. IIRC, he also said something about a warning diagnostic message if such degradation was occurring. From whence I know not, but it never appeared so I fumbled on regardless and I’m happy with the result. As he said, you can always pull the plug on the old drive at any time, once you’ve got what you need from it.

Alan

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Al:

Thanks for the doc; apparently there’s no difference (“…IDE and ATA are one and the same thing…”). Geesh! Could the mfg make things more confusing? OK, well, I guess I have everything set to go this weekend thanks to everyone’s help. I do apologize for my ignorance drawing this thread out for so long, and I’ll probably be back looking for more help; I will, however, start a new post.

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Could they make things more confusing? Yes. Consider the situation a few years ago when in many cases two devices from different manufacturers wouldn’t work together even though they were both ‘SCSI’. Now that’s what I call confusing!

Note that under WinXP you can assign drive letters to partitions. If you want to keep your CD-ROM drive as D: you can. Not that I’m necessarily advising that-just noting that you can do it if it solves some problem for you.

Personally, I’ve quit partitioning hard drives since I went to NTFS formatting. The driving reason for partitions in my case was efficiency-I wanted to keep the cluster sizes down. NTFS doesn’t have that problem & the other reasons (backup/management) I can do just as well by putting things in the appropriate directories as by putting them on the appropriate drives.

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Could they make things more confusing? Yes. Consider the situation a few years ago when in many cases two devices from different manufacturers wouldn’t work together even though they were both ‘SCSI’. Now that’s what I call confusing!

Note that under WinXP you can assign drive letters to partitions. If you want to keep your CD-ROM drive as D: you can. Not that I’m necessarily advising that-just noting that you can do it if it solves some problem for you.

Personally, I’ve quit partitioning hard drives since I went to NTFS formatting. The driving reason for partitions in my case was efficiency-I wanted to keep the cluster sizes down. NTFS doesn’t have that problem & the other reasons (backup/management) I can do just as well by putting things in the appropriate directories as by putting them on the appropriate drives.

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Al:

Thanks for the doc; apparently there’s no difference (“…IDE and ATA are one and the same thing…”). Geesh! Could the mfg make things more confusing? OK, well, I guess I have everything set to go this weekend thanks to everyone’s help. I do apologize for my ignorance drawing this thread out for so long, and I’ll probably be back looking for more help; I will, however, start a new post.

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[indent]

---

…the cable that came with the drive has eighty wires (yes, I counted them) and forty pins…

---

[/indent] That’s Ultra ATA for you. I think you’re alright and I’d warm up the coffee pot for the weekend’s work! You might find something of interest in reading this page. And considering Alan’s post above about this, I also have a couple of drives in this machine connected with an 80-wire cable where one of the drives is an Ultra ATA 7200 rpm and the other is not. If there’s any speed degradation, I’ve never been able to discern it. Good luck.

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[indent]

---

…Backup is from single un-partitioned drive; trying to restore to multi-partition drive…

---

[/indent] All the backup/restore programs that I’ve used don’t care WHERE you put a restore, but I always admit I haven’t used Ghost for several years, so I hope it’s the same. When you start a restore, the program “should” ask you for the destination partition, hence drive letter, and it shouldn’t care if there are other partitions on that same physical drive. Some programs, during the restore startup, will ask if you want to resize the destination partition or leave it alone, i.e. the greater space will be left empty. Just be careful to read the prompts and don’t click too fast.

Edited to add: [indent]

---

…WD 120 GB WD1200JB 7200 RPM 8MB BUFFER ATA 100 HARD DRIVE…

---

[/indent] This is what you said you ordered, not SATA. And here’s the WD descriptive link.

Reply | Quote

Big Al:

I sure hope I don

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Well, let me see if I can say something lucid and not too confusing here, assuming you get the problem with PM 8 straightened out. You’ve apparently already taken the most important step if you have a backup already made. Partitioning and preparing a drive is kinda separate from the assignment of drive LETTERS. If you connect a new drive to your system, say for example in the slave position of the primary channel, run something like PM and partition that drive to the number and size partitions you want, that drive will be assigned letter(s) dependent on its current “connection.” If you then shutdown and remove the master drive, change the jumper(s) on the new drive to master, and reboot the system, the new drive will then have drive letters assigned to it, starting with C: and so on, depending on what else is still connected to the primary and secondary chains. One thing you MAY have to do is to use PM to make the boot partition on the new drive “ACTIVE.” You should then be able to restore your backup to that C: drive of that new device. Have I confused the issue too much?

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Big Al:

Thanks for the input. I actually already have Partition Magic 8.0 (sort of). By that I mean to say that it was a download purchase onto my dual-drive laptop (back when PowerQuest had it). The problem now is that Symantec purchased the rights to it and the unlock codes no longer work for re-downloading the software. I contacted Symantec (as well as DigitalRiver) to get it resolved, but it was more than the rep could handle; the issue being referred to a higher level (this was yesterday, I haven’t heard back from them, yet).

I think one of the concepts my little mind is having a problem with is how partitioning can occur on a new drive prior to install. Uh, I didn’t put that quite right. Let’s see. . .

The existing drive is the only drive on the primary as Master (secondary channel has CD/RW and REV drive)
Do System Backup with Ghost to REV drive (bootable)
Shut down system and remove old HD
Install new HD as Master and boot from REV
Restore from REV to new HD.

I understand there is a Slave position on the primary channel (not currently used), but don’t know how to go about using it to partition the new HD (or even if that’s what I’m supposed to do). Kind of learning on the run here. If I were to do that, I don’t get how you can have the original HD ( C: ) as Master and then try to partition the Slave (new HD)as C:; and then swap their positions later and re-name? I’m probably making things worse than they really are.

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Alan’s already said this, but I just wanted to add an “amen” about partitioning software. There are some computer users for whom such a product would (might) be out of the question, but for anyone who’s a “medium” level, support yourself kinda computer person, having something like Partition Magic (or another product) in your toolbag is or should be a pretty high priority. Whether it’s initial setup of a new drive or the ability to make later changes to your structure, there’s no loss of data and the concept is pretty easy to deal with, once you’ve gotten your feet wet. With the demise of PowerQuest as you can tell from other threads, I’ve switched from Partition Magic to the Acronis Disk Director suite, but …..

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Alan:

?
(In the emotional spectrum, I wonder how far laughing is from crying?)

Thanks again Alan for encouraging me to move forward (he said cowering in the corner). I know this must seem ridiculously simple to most, but as a first-timer I’m still a bit apprehensive (6’2″ @ 230lbs doesn’t help much with this issue). However, as a long-time Access Lounger, I’ve learned that Woody’s has some of the best advise you can find anywhere (including so-called tech support). I still think this is one of the most amazing places on the web; totally selfless people volunteering their experience and support to others without the slightest compensation for their considerable efforts. Try to find something like that anywhere else!

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Uh oh. What’s the difference between a Serial ATA Hard Drive (what I thought I ordered) and a Enhanced IDE Hard Drive (what I just received)?

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SATA is the newer, faster, more expensive kind of disk. It requires a different data and power connector (and the motherboard that supports it).

Check your order.

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SATA is the newer, faster, more expensive kind of disk. It requires a different data and power connector (and the motherboard that supports it).

Check your order.

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Uh oh. What’s the difference between a Serial ATA Hard Drive (what I thought I ordered) and a Enhanced IDE Hard Drive (what I just received)?

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I don’t see any problem with your (understandably conservative) approach. As I said, I know nothing of XP and NTFS issues. But generally, so long as you don’t wipe your existing HD, you’re still in business, so to speak. Even if there’s a great string of foulups over the weekend, you can still reconnect your old HD to the IDE cable and you’re back where you started. I wouldn’t even physically remove the old HD – just pull the IDE cable out.

Did your HD come with a CD of disk utilities? It might be worth checking these to see what they can do for you e.g. format to NTFS. It may also carry non-destructive partitioning software. What I would do is to make a boot floppy from your existing installation (if you can with XP?) and ensure that it carries the appropriate version of FDISK and FORMAT to do the job you need, and provides CD reader functionality. The Ultimate Boot Disk I mentioned earlier is also worth downloading and imaging to floppy. Then make sure they actually boot . It might also be worth printing out any instructions etc. you might need to use them.

With regard to partitioning, this can all be done further down the track. The Partition Magic software I recommended (and there may be a similar utility that comes with your new HD software) is a Windows program anyway, so you still need to start with Windows loaded on one big C: partition. I’d regard partitioning as a refinement, but it becomes harder if you want to move installed programs, say, to a new partition. The longer you leave it, the more problematic a task it could become.

I know it seems “scarey” the first time you do it, but so long as your original HD stays intact, you should be laughing!

Alan

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[indent]

---

My greatest concern is that I be able to accomplish this over the weekend without “incident”. This machine runs my entire business; so if I’m not up and running Monday morning I’m out of business (thus the current pesky paranoia).

---

[/indent]

In this case, you should leave yourself and easy path to go back to square one and not mess with the 20 Gb drive (after you back it up, of course). Then if some disaster happens, you know you can always just pop the old drive back in where it was and you be rigth where you left off.

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[indent]

---

My greatest concern is that I be able to accomplish this over the weekend without “incident”. This machine runs my entire business; so if I’m not up and running Monday morning I’m out of business (thus the current pesky paranoia).

---

[/indent]

In this case, you should leave yourself and easy path to go back to square one and not mess with the 20 Gb drive (after you back it up, of course). Then if some disaster happens, you know you can always just pop the old drive back in where it was and you be rigth where you left off.

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Interesting, I hadn’t considered that.

On one hand, I wonder if the speed difference is really all that dramatic if you are just comparing different version of your basic 5400 rpm EIDE drive, or if you would only see this effect if you were comparing a brand new SATA 7200rpm 8Mb cahce monster to an old 4 Gb IDE clunker.

On the other hand, I have just ran one of those on-line performance tests on my new pc platform and I got disapointing results on the disk speed, and I do have an older 8Gb drive installed as the slave. But I don’t see quite how one hard drive can slow the other down. They are separate block devices, they aren’t synchronous at all.

On the gripping hand, I don’t think you will see any speed advantage of a swap file on a separate paritition, but on the saem physical disk. The speed advantage comes from having a second set of heads do the seeking and writing on the swap file.

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Interesting, I hadn’t considered that.

On one hand, I wonder if the speed difference is really all that dramatic if you are just comparing different version of your basic 5400 rpm EIDE drive, or if you would only see this effect if you were comparing a brand new SATA 7200rpm 8Mb cahce monster to an old 4 Gb IDE clunker.

On the other hand, I have just ran one of those on-line performance tests on my new pc platform and I got disapointing results on the disk speed, and I do have an older 8Gb drive installed as the slave. But I don’t see quite how one hard drive can slow the other down. They are separate block devices, they aren’t synchronous at all.

On the gripping hand, I don’t think you will see any speed advantage of a swap file on a separate paritition, but on the saem physical disk. The speed advantage comes from having a second set of heads do the seeking and writing on the swap file.

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Hi Jim

---

I wipe the old drive and use it to hold the windows swap files, and the backup.

---

That brings up some interesting points. I used to adopt this approach as “obviously” the best choice a few years back, until one of our techs pointed out a couple of things:

1) HD speeds have leaped dramatically in recent years, so the perceived advantages of having the swap file running to a dedicated (physical) HD might be offset by the inherently slower speed of the old HD. I’ve opted for the advantages of a swapfile on a dedicated partition, but on the faster new primary HD.

2) It’s even possible that the very presence of the old “slow” HD on the same IDE might slow down everything, including the speedy new HD. For instance, plugging an “old” 40 pin HD into a “new” 80-wire cable might slow everything up on that IDE. Mind you, I use this config and I’m quite happy with it – I’m not prepared to junk a perfectly good HD, and lose the advantage of a (hot swap) slave without significant monetary compensation .

Alan

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What I usually do is to start with a fresh install on the new, blank drive as master. The existing drive is re-jumpered to be the slave. After installation of the OS and base applications, I can work on transferring over all the data and settings from the old drive at my liesure. This saves me the “backup all your data step.” Makes me feel better, because I _always_ forget something.

After that, I wipe the old drive and use it to hold the windows swap files, and the backup.

I do like AlanMiller’s paritioning scheme too. I may follow his lead next time I get the idea to go and reorganize my hard drive.

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I’m sure there’s a benefit to splitting the drive into little slices, but there’s always the risk that C will be too small, given the way Windows stashes updates and other stuff in various hidden folders. You might simply make it all one big C drive (under 128GB, this is supported by Windows XP SP1 without modifications; over 128GB an updated to ATAPI.SYS – or exe or something – is needed).

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I was worried about this myself at first – even using tiny ol’ 98SE and dedicating 10GB to it plus Office. I decided though that using Partition Magic, which allows for non-destructive resizing of partitions, I was pretty safe in this area. It certainly would have been a bigger concern had I had only FDISK or other destructive partitioning programs at my disposal.

Alan

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I was worried about this myself at first – even using tiny ol’ 98SE and dedicating 10GB to it plus Office. I decided though that using Partition Magic, which allows for non-destructive resizing of partitions, I was pretty safe in this area. It certainly would have been a bigger concern had I had only FDISK or other destructive partitioning programs at my disposal.

Alan

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Jefferson:

Thanks also to you for your input. Boy, I sure hope some of you guys are around this weekend (paranoia mounting)

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Jefferson:

Thanks also to you for your input. Boy, I sure hope some of you guys are around this weekend (paranoia mounting)

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(Edited by AlanMiller on 15-Sep-04 13:13. Added extra info, minor corrections, tidied up a bit 🙂)

Hi Bryan

I had a very similar issue myself, but with “old” 10GB and new 60GB with Win98SE. I followed some very good tips here in the forum and came up with a highly satisfactory solution. A couple of points generally:

o Your new HD will probably be considerably faster than the old one, so would probably be best as master.
o The usual config is to have both HDs on one IDE cable, with the other IDE for CD, DVD etc.
o The WD is a “quirky” brand in my experience, and will want to be master regardless. There are also jumper settings, peculiar to WD to attend to.

The way I did it was to (ultimately) use the small slave as a backup for important stuff. This might be insufficient for your own requirements though. I’ve also found it of value to put the slave in a removable caddy, just as an added convenience.

Probably the best advice I followed was to get hold of Partition Magic, and partition the new drive in accordance with my own needs and to the benefit of the O/S. I’m not sure of the XP issues, nor with NTFS, but my partitions look roughly like this:

C: Windows and Office plus anything that absolutely insists on using C:
D: My old HD
E: My Documents (easy to back up this whole partition)
F: Data – a variety of downloads, volume for CD burning, …
G: Dedicated purely for the Windows swap file – avoids problems of mixing this up with other files/ folders
H: Scratch – dedicated to anything temporary in nature – temp files, internet cache, %temp% etc.
Dead easy to blow the whole lot away if/ when desired.
I: Program Files
J: Copy of old HD (same size)

To effect all the changes, I used TweakUI to change the locations appropriately, of Window’s “Special Folders”. On 98 these are:
o Common Program Files
o Desktop
o Document Templates
o Favorites *E:
o My Documents *E:
o Program Files *I:
o Programs
o Recent Documents *H:
o Send To
o Start Menu
o Startup

I only changed those with a *, in accordance with my “functional” partitions. I don’t think this is an exact science but there are a few minor gotchas to watch for.

The sequence I followed was:

o Clean install of Windows onto new C:
The Ultimate Boot Disk or similar might be useful here.

o Install Partition Magic and set up desired partitions etc. as above.
Planning Your Partitions has some very good information, as does Drive Partitioning.

o Use the XXCopy program to mirror the old HD onto J: (in my case).
The old HD is then available for backup of “important” partitions on new C:
I used J: as a reference for fresh program installs, copying old settings and of course as the repository of my own work, which would gradually be migrated to other appropriate locations. Ultimately J: can disappear.

Then the laborious (but strangely satisfying) reinstallation of desired programs. That’s just the rough idea, devoid of gory details, but it might give some ideas. Post back if you want further details on anything I mentioned.

Enjoy!

Alan

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Alan:

Wow, thanks for all the info! I’ll need to on all of it for a while, but that’s just what I was looking for. While I have little if any real experience with hardware issues, I have learned in my escapades with Access apps that forethought goes a long way toward avoiding problems later. Thanks again, and I’m sure I’ll have further questions later (like how to put out an electrical fire).

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Alan:

Wow, thanks for all the info! I’ll need to on all of it for a while, but that’s just what I was looking for. While I have little if any real experience with hardware issues, I have learned in my escapades with Access apps that forethought goes a long way toward avoiding problems later. Thanks again, and I’m sure I’ll have further questions later (like how to put out an electrical fire).

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FWIW I’ve not found WD to be a ‘quirky’ brand that prefers to be master. Did you maybe mean this specific model? I’ve no experience with that but I’ve got several others (10 & 20GB) running as slaves in various machines with no problems. Like any other drive, I just change the jumper to slave.

I *think* I remember the WD preferring to be on a different cable than the CD-ROM though-but it’s been years since I put HD & CD on the same cable anyway so I’m no longer certain that it was a WD I was using at the time.

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I can’t remember full details except for the most recent case. I know that the WD was set up as slave and showed up as D:, but Windows98 “insisted” on trying to install onto D:. The only way to coerce it to go the Fujitsu on C: was to pull the IDE connector on the WD and go from there. Having seen the problems of having Windows installed on D: before (also a WD) I wasn’t falling for that one!

I asked two of the hardware techs at work about it and they each had stories about WDs being problematic in some context or other. That said, I’ve not heard of nor had any problems once things were established. I run one happily as a slave now. There’s also a fairly current thread on a WD problem with jumper settings, but I don’t know the details off hand. But maybe part of the “quirk” is that they can also behave as expected .

Alan

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It’s certainly possible. I don’t use a lot of WD drives because I remember a bad run they had several years ago. (1.2GB models, I think) Of course all brands have occasional bad models-and my memory of the WD problem was that it was a problem in the manufacturing, not a design flaw. Whatever it was we had a whole bunch of those drives, all purchased at the same time, go bad very quickly. They were replaced under warranty & WD eventually admitted that the entire batch had problems, but it was too late-I didn’t use another WD drive for the next couple of years.

I started using them again a couple of years ago though when they came out with their Special Edition with the 8MB cache. Haven’t encountered any problems or quirks although I’m still cautious, but currently I tend to regard their problems as being with specific models rather than belonging to the entire brand.

I’ve certainly never encountered the problem you described. In fact there have been times when I’ve wanted to install Win98 on D: and been unable to do so. If I were still using Win98 I’d be real interested in what caused the problem & how I could ’cause’ it when I wanted to.

Appreciate you sharing your experience. Thanks.

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I can’t remember full details except for the most recent case. I know that the WD was set up as slave and showed up as D:, but Windows98 “insisted” on trying to install onto D:. The only way to coerce it to go the Fujitsu on C: was to pull the IDE connector on the WD and go from there. Having seen the problems of having Windows installed on D: before (also a WD) I wasn’t falling for that one!

I asked two of the hardware techs at work about it and they each had stories about WDs being problematic in some context or other. That said, I’ve not heard of nor had any problems once things were established. I run one happily as a slave now. There’s also a fairly current thread on a WD problem with jumper settings, but I don’t know the details off hand. But maybe part of the “quirk” is that they can also behave as expected .

Alan

Reply | Quote

FWIW I’ve not found WD to be a ‘quirky’ brand that prefers to be master. Did you maybe mean this specific model? I’ve no experience with that but I’ve got several others (10 & 20GB) running as slaves in various machines with no problems. Like any other drive, I just change the jumper to slave.

I *think* I remember the WD preferring to be on a different cable than the CD-ROM though-but it’s been years since I put HD & CD on the same cable anyway so I’m no longer certain that it was a WD I was using at the time.

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Bravo. Deserving of a StarPost?

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Bravo. Deserving of a StarPost?

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(Edited by AlanMiller on 15-Sep-04 13:13. Added extra info, minor corrections, tidied up a bit 🙂)

Hi Bryan

I had a very similar issue myself, but with “old” 10GB and new 60GB with Win98SE. I followed some very good tips here in the forum and came up with a highly satisfactory solution. A couple of points generally:

o Your new HD will probably be considerably faster than the old one, so would probably be best as master.
o The usual config is to have both HDs on one IDE cable, with the other IDE for CD, DVD etc.
o The WD is a “quirky” brand in my experience, and will want to be master regardless. There are also jumper settings, peculiar to WD to attend to.

The way I did it was to (ultimately) use the small slave as a backup for important stuff. This might be insufficient for your own requirements though. I’ve also found it of value to put the slave in a removable caddy, just as an added convenience.

Probably the best advice I followed was to get hold of Partition Magic, and partition the new drive in accordance with my own needs and to the benefit of the O/S. I’m not sure of the XP issues, nor with NTFS, but my partitions look roughly like this:

C: Windows and Office plus anything that absolutely insists on using C:
D: My old HD
E: My Documents (easy to back up this whole partition)
F: Data – a variety of downloads, volume for CD burning, …
G: Dedicated purely for the Windows swap file – avoids problems of mixing this up with other files/ folders
H: Scratch – dedicated to anything temporary in nature – temp files, internet cache, %temp% etc.
Dead easy to blow the whole lot away if/ when desired.
I: Program Files
J: Copy of old HD (same size)

To effect all the changes, I used TweakUI to change the locations appropriately, of Window’s “Special Folders”. On 98 these are:
o Common Program Files
o Desktop
o Document Templates
o Favorites *E:
o My Documents *E:
o Program Files *I:
o Programs
o Recent Documents *H:
o Send To
o Start Menu
o Startup

I only changed those with a *, in accordance with my “functional” partitions. I don’t think this is an exact science but there are a few minor gotchas to watch for.

The sequence I followed was:

o Clean install of Windows onto new C:
The Ultimate Boot Disk or similar might be useful here.

o Install Partition Magic and set up desired partitions etc. as above.
Planning Your Partitions has some very good information, as does Drive Partitioning.

o Use the XXCopy program to mirror the old HD onto J: (in my case).
The old HD is then available for backup of “important” partitions on new C:
I used J: as a reference for fresh program installs, copying old settings and of course as the repository of my own work, which would gradually be migrated to other appropriate locations. Ultimately J: can disappear.

Then the laborious (but strangely satisfying) reinstallation of desired programs. That’s just the rough idea, devoid of gory details, but it might give some ideas. Post back if you want further details on anything I mentioned.

Enjoy!

Alan

Reply | Quote