Large hard drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anthony
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Anthony

I recently added an 80 Gb Maxtor to my Dell Dimension
8200. It is a slave drive to the original 40Gb Western
Digital. To get the Maxtor to work I needed to run
their "PowerMax" software. I was told by Maxtor that if
I ever reinstall or format and reinstall the contents of
the C-drive (West Dig), that I would need to reformat the
Maxtor. This does not make sense to me. Shouldn't the
two drives be somewhat independent of each other? I like
to format my primary once a year to clean out junk files
but I don't want to reinstall ALL my D-drive stuff too.
What can I do?
 
How to Partition and Format a Hard Disk in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313348&Product=winxp

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


|I recently added an 80 Gb Maxtor to my Dell Dimension
| 8200. It is a slave drive to the original 40Gb Western
| Digital. To get the Maxtor to work I needed to run
| their "PowerMax" software. I was told by Maxtor that if
| I ever reinstall or format and reinstall the contents of
| the C-drive (West Dig), that I would need to reformat the
| Maxtor. This does not make sense to me. Shouldn't the
| two drives be somewhat independent of each other? I like
| to format my primary once a year to clean out junk files
| but I don't want to reinstall ALL my D-drive stuff too.
| What can I do?
 
HOW TO: Use Disk Management to Configure Basic Disks in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;309000

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


|I recently added an 80 Gb Maxtor to my Dell Dimension
| 8200. It is a slave drive to the original 40Gb Western
| Digital. To get the Maxtor to work I needed to run
| their "PowerMax" software. I was told by Maxtor that if
| I ever reinstall or format and reinstall the contents of
| the C-drive (West Dig), that I would need to reformat the
| Maxtor. This does not make sense to me. Shouldn't the
| two drives be somewhat independent of each other? I like
| to format my primary once a year to clean out junk files
| but I don't want to reinstall ALL my D-drive stuff too.
| What can I do?
 
If your operating system is on the C drive and applications are on your D
drive, then all applications would need to be reinstalled if you format the
C drive as the operating system, upon reinstall, will not know where the
applications are and files necessary to run those apps, even though
installed on D are sometimes necessary on the system drive. It's possible
that's what Maxtor meant in which case, you aside from your data files which
should be backed up anyway, you might as well format the D drive as all
applications would need to be reinstalled.

Beyond that, I can't say as you haven't given us enough information, what's
on the old drive, what's on the new drive, did you install XP to the new
drive and apps to the old drive, not enough information to answer you.
 
Anthony said:
I recently added an 80 Gb Maxtor to my Dell Dimension
8200. It is a slave drive to the original 40Gb Western
Digital. To get the Maxtor to work I needed to run
their "PowerMax" software. I was told by Maxtor that if
I ever reinstall or format and reinstall the contents of
the C-drive (West Dig), that I would need to reformat the
Maxtor. This does not make sense to me. Shouldn't the
two drives be somewhat independent of each other? I like
to format my primary once a year to clean out junk files
but I don't want to reinstall ALL my D-drive stuff too.
What can I do?
Click to expand...

There is no reason you should have to reformat the secondary drive in order
to format the primary. If you have applications installed on the secondary
drive and reformat the primary drive you would have to reinstall the
applications in order to recreate the proper registry entries.

FWIW (and for future reference) there is also no reason you should have to
use the drive manufacturers software to install an 80GB drive. Physically
installing it and using XP's native disk management to partition and format
is all you need to do. This worked fine on my 120GB. Maxtor I installed in a
Dell Dimension 8200 as a secondary drive.

--
D

I'm not an MVP a VIP nor do I have ESP.
I was just trying to help.
Please use your own best judgment before implementing any suggestions or
advice herein.
No warranty is expressed or implied.
Your mileage may vary.
See store for details. :)

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