Install Old Hard Drive as Slave??

[felderbush001]

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

 

[Grinder]

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.

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.

 

[kony]

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.

 

[felderbush001]

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