harddrive and slave/master question...

[coadman]

I copied this "thread" I had posted in another forum,,and didnt receive any responses, so thought I'd try here, to see if I received any suggestions.

Dual Boot question,pertaining to master/slave hookup...
Sometime in the next few days, I am going to fix my brother up witha dual boot system..He has windows 98 on his old harddrive, but wanted to try Windows XP, so he purchased an additonal harddrive to do this on. Newt has already covered(I think pretty well), what I need to do to set up the dual boot system. My question was where to install the new harddrive. He currantly has his present hard drive as master on IDE1, along with a CD rom as slave on IDE1. He has a DVDburner as secondary master on IDE2, along with a CDburner as secondary slave on IDE2. I am going to remove his CDrom, and install his CDburner as the primary slave on IDE1. Now,,where should I place the new harddrive, either at secondary master or secondary slave on IDE2. Bear in mind that he wishes to copy CD's on the fly, thus the reason for moving the CD burner to IDE1. Any ideas?
thanks,
coadman

[Cobra]

- Primary Master - Hard Drive
- Primary Slave - New Hard Drive (if the new hard drive is bigger and faster, make it master)
- Secondary Master - DVD Burner
- Secondary Slave - CD-RW

I hope I got the drives right....

Let me expain my choices. The hard drives need the best data flow, right? They are ATA100 or ATA133, so you're better making them primary over the DVD or CD drives which are only ATA33 or 66 (maybe). These should be secondary, since they are slower.

The DVD burner should be primary, as it demands the best dataflow (and a DVD is a costly coaster!). This leaves only one place for a CD-RW and that's secondary slave. Not a problem - this is precisely the way I have my other machine set up.

Hope this helps,

CobraDMX

[coadman]

Thanks for the reply, Cobra......The only thing is my brother likes to record CD's "on the fly", so he wants the Cd and DVD on separate IDE's. I would think you would get better performance if you copied to a harddrive then burn the copy, that's the only way I do it.
coadman

[Cobra]

If you want to copy CDs on the fly, this is the best way to do it. It is the way I copy my CDs at high speed.

If you look inside any commercially-built machine, this is the way they will do it aswell.

It's best to keep similar devices on the same cable, and the most data-critical device as master.

Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed, trust me.

Cobra

[coadman]

If you want to copy CDs on the fly, this is the best way to do it. It is the way I copy my CDs at high speed.

If you look inside any commercially-built machine, this is the way they will do it aswell.

It's best to keep similar devices on the same cable, and the most data-critical device as master.

Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed, trust me.

Cobra

Ok, We'll give it a shot! I had just thought I had read somewhere, that if you were wanting to make copies on the fly, the two devices needed to be on separate IDE channels...But, the way you describe it, is easy enough to do.
Thanks,
coadman

[au7usa]

Buy a SCSI card.

[rallynavvie]

Wouldn't it be better to have the HDD with XP on it be the master drive? Something about the bootloader working better with XP...

[coadman]

Buy a SCSI card.

.
I'm open for suggestions,,with that in mind,,what advantage will using the SCSI card over just installing the 2 HD's on the IDE1?




"Wouldn't it be better to have the HDD with XP on it be the master drive? Something about the bootloader working better with XP..."

Rallynavvie: I kind of figured I would install his new HD as the master(it is a 120 WD), along with the XP, and put his 40 G HD as the slave. I imagine after awhile, he will do most of his computer work on the XP side, but right now he has some programs he doesnt know if will work in XP, plus he wants to "feel" his way around the XP first before he decides it isnt too "overwhelming", thanks for the comments.
coadman

[gmatov]

First, what the hell good is a SCSI card with IDE drives? Get serious, or get lost.

All my reading says you load the oldest OS first, so if you keep the small drive, with 98, you either install XP to a second partition of the same drive, or the first partition of the new drive.

Why get rid of the "small" drive if it works?

Bootloader, in your case, will be on the C:\ drive, in any event, so just install the drive, tell XP where to go, as a second OS, do not allow it to upgrade, and you are home free.

You will get a choice of whichb OS to boot to with a 30 second window, select your poison or let it boot on auto.

Cheers,

George

[Cobra]

I agree with rallynavvie, whichever drive you have XP on should be your primary master. I would make the biggest and fastest drive this one.

Cobra

[au7usa]

Yeah, silly me with the SCSI card......I can only connect 9 more devices to this chain.

[gmatov]

Good for you and SCSI, but if you go way up to the top of this thread, you will read that his brother has bought a new drive, IDE, I would assume, as he is asking on which IDE channel it should be connected.

SATA's gonna kick SCSI's ass, anyhow, per some of the other posters here. Then you'll be stuck with all that useless, obsolete hardware.

And, if you do go SCSI, best you get 15k drives, so you don't drop frames, cause "everybody knows you can't have too much data writing speed for video capture. You'll drop frames left and right."

The original poster can put his drives where he wants them. With just 4 devices in all, not too many permutations to do a trial and error setup. Not good enough, swap 2 devices at a time. You're not gonna bust anything.

Cheers,

George

[rallynavvie]

No, this thread wasn't really about SCSI or SATA. Just plain old IDE drives. Where would I be without them? I do have 15krpm SCSI drives in my machine, but what does the 3.6ms seek times have to do with capturing? I would think the 320 MB/sec sustained transfers were what would be important capturing AFAIK SATA is only 150 MB/sec; not even 2 SATA drives on a RAID 0 beats that. Not that it matters, we can't really use all that bandwidth anyway. ATA (both serial and not) and SCSI are still two different technologies.

Speaking of which, we need a good hard drive discussion thread here somewhere...

[gmatov]

Rallie,

A HDD thread would not do much to change anyone's mind. "I gots what I gots, and yunz is all stupid to not get what I gots",

That about sums it up.

If you take the total throughput of DV, or .avi, and divide by the per second throughput, ATA33 will do it.

And, we go on about "defrag, defrag, defrag, you'll never have a dropped frame."

They did a test, ZDTV, or ZDnet, or somebody, found not a 10th of a second difference.

Yet, we want RAMDrive write capabilities to cap DivX. Is somebody goofy, herer?

Read is an entirely different story. You only need to read as fast as your conversion prog can convert. And you can sure as hell read a lot faster than ANY converter can process.

Ah, well, I'm happy with my lowly ATA 133 drives.

Cheers,

George

[coadman]

I do have one other question,, this is a new WD 120G HD we will be using,,,will I have to format it first, before using? If so,,just use the right click, format on the mouse,,or does WD have some special way it likes to be done?
thanks,
coadman

[rallynavvie]

I guess it depends on how you install it. If you install it and boot into Win98 with the other you can format it just like any other drive, however I don't believe 98 supports NTFS which is what XP likes. I'd suggest installing it as the only hard drive and boot to your XP install disk and let it format it and set it up just like it was installing the OS on a new computer. Then add the other hard drive with 98 and use a bootloader to switch between them at startup (I believe Windows has a built-in one).

[au7usa]

http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,79769,00.html

[coadman]

Halfway home,,but haveing a few problems with my "dual boot setup",,,,Currantly Win98 is/was on C:...I placed WinXP disc in,,went into windows setup,,,had them format and install into F:, continued loading all windows programs. Rebooted computer, but now it boots directly into XP without the option of selecting Win98. What happened to my "dual boot", any ideas?
thanks,
coadman

[coadman]

here's more information,,,still "stuck"

I did a search on the internet for more info on dual boot systems, and your site came up. I read several of your threads pertaining to the subject, but still have problems. I had been following another persons advice as to setting this up,but everything we have tried has failed. Here is the situation.......We have Win98 installed on 1 harddrive(C, we purchased another larger harddrive and installed it in the computer with the hopes of developing a dual boot system. We installed the New harddrive as Master on IDE1, and the old harddrive as slave on IDE!. We installed the windows XP disc, and selected to format the new drive(F and install windows XP at that location. Now, when we reboot, it goes directly to Windows XP, and doesnt even give us the option to choose the C: drive where Win 98 is located. The C: drive shows up within XP, and I can view the files there, through "my computer". I have changed the boot.ini in C: to look like this....
boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW
S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 98" /fastdetect
with no positive results,,,any ideas? thanks coadman

[gmatov]

You can't do that.

You should have left the old drive, with 98, as Master, IDE0, the new one as slave, IDE1, or on the secondary IDE.

The easiest thing for you to try now is to put the old drive back as Primary Master, and re-install XP, choosing either to install to the new drive, or to a partition on the old drive.

Remember, the oldest version of Windows has to be installed first, whether 2 versions only, or 3 or 4.

That will write to the bootloader on C:\, into 98.

When you do boot, you will get the option to choose, with a 30 second window.

I don't have XP, boot with 98 and W2k, and 2k gives me control of which OS I want to be default, as well as the time out. If you make the time too short, you may look away or something and find yourself booted into the other OS from the one you wish for that session.

I don't follow the reasoning for installing to F:\. With your 98 machine, you should have C:\ as Primary, D:\ as your second drive, E:\, F:\, or however many partitions as the first drive has, then the partitions on your second hard drive, then Primary Optical, Secondary Optical.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

George

[coadman]

[quote="gmatov"]You can't do that.

You should have left the old drive, with 98, as Master, IDE0, the new one as slave, IDE1, or on the secondary IDE.

The easiest thing for you to try now is to put the old drive back as Primary Master, and re-install XP, choosing either to install to the new drive, or to a partition on the old drive.

Remember, the oldest version of Windows has to be installed first, whether 2 versions only, or 3 or 4.

That will write to the bootloader on C:\, into 98.

When you do boot, you will get the option to choose, with a 30 second window.

I thought that possibly could be ther problem,,but I had done some reading where I thought I had read where your "biggest" harddrive should be master and the smaller slave,,thus my reasoning. I will try as you suggested.


I don't follow the reasoning for installing to F:\. With your 98 machine, you should have C:\ as Primary, D:\ as your second drive, E:\, F:\, or however many partitions as the first drive has, then the partitions on your second hard drive, then Primary Optical, Secondary Optical.

With XP install disc in the drive, after booting it took me to windows setup page. Selected to install windows XP, and I was given two choices,,install on C: or F:......C: already had the 98 on it so I know I didnt want it there, F: was the only other option. Maybe I should have mentioned in my previous post, that I have a CD burner on D:, and a DVD burner on E:.?
Anyway, I will try what you suggested,,at least it is the most encouraging response I have had!
thanks,
coadman

[mccoady]

You can't do that.

You should have left the old drive, with 98, as Master, IDE0, the new one as slave, IDE1, or on the secondary IDE.

The easiest thing for you to try now is to put the old drive back as Primary Master, and re-install XP, choosing either to install to the new drive, or to a partition on the old drive.

Remember, the oldest version of Windows has to be installed first, whether 2 versions only, or 3 or 4.

That will write to the bootloader on C:\, into 98.

When you do boot, you will get the option to choose, with a 30 second window.

I don't have XP, boot with 98 and W2k, and 2k gives me control of which OS I want to be default, as well as the time out. If you make the time too short, you may look away or something and find yourself booted into the other OS from the one you wish for that session.

I don't follow the reasoning for installing to F:\. With your 98 machine, you should have C:\ as Primary, D:\ as your second drive, E:\, F:\, or however many partitions as the first drive has, then the partitions on your second hard drive, then Primary Optical, Secondary Optical.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

George

George,
We just now made the swap,,,the old drive with Win98 on it is now the Master on IDE1,,,the new harddrive with WinXP on it is now the Slave on the IDE1. IF we now have to re-install WinXP, do we do it from within the Win 98? I tried just booting with the WinXP disc, and it took me to Windows setup, and asked me where I wanted to install WinXP, but only gave me the one option C: which would be right on top of my Win98,,so didnt pursue any further. Tried to install XP while in Win98 via "run", but asked if I wanted an update or a full install, so I quit after that question, as it seemed as if it was going to install it over my Win98 on the C: drive...IM lost now????
coadman

[RabidDog]

I think you chickened out to early .. when it says do you want to upgrade or fuill install, it (hopefully) means it Has detected win98 and would upgrade tha to xp or do a full install to a different disk..The win/xp install is quite good and will allow you to back out at any time up till you start installing, just dont rush it!
Also spare PCI ide cards are pretty cheap.. but drives on their own cable

[gmatov]

Mac,

I can only really tell you the routine with W2k, but, if you choose Full Install, or maybe, New Installation, just not Upgrade, a page or two later you should get abox that says "Copy setup files to disk", and "Let me choose installation location" or somesuch.

Then you will get another screen which will allow you to select the drive/partition.

You can abort at any time, just as you already have.

Cheers,

George

Maybe an XP user can verify this, a dual booter, preferably.

[coadman]

SUCCESS!! I went ahead and installed the WinXP from within the Win98, and all is well now. I now have Win98 on C:, and WinXP on D:...Thanks for all the help guys.
coadman

[gmatov]

Good fo you.

I assume your boot screen gives you the option, with 30 second window to choose?

And that you have the one you want to boot by default AS the default?

Cheers,

George

[coadman]

Yes, that is correct, George,,,we have the options what to select and like 30 sec to make the choice or the one boots in default. Only thing that is out of the ordinary,,is I have "2" Windows XP to select from, followed by the "Windows"(which has the Win98). I just installed the XP(full install) over the top of the XP I had installed earlier,,I was thinking the program told me I had this already installed and asked me if I wanted to install over the top and reformat,,,I clicked "yes" and assumed it did so. I was surprised to see "2" winXP, although I havent clicked on the second one yet to see what it would do. In "my computer" there is only two drives showing up, C: & D:
coadman

Edit: My brother told me he tried to click on the second Win XP at startup, and it gave him a message of incomplete file. So apparantly nothing is there? Will it hurt to just delete that, and if so,,how so to do it? I guess if it is "incomplete" it doesnt hurt anything being there.
coadman

[gmatov]

coadman,

The only way I can see that you have 2 XPs to boot to is that when you backed out of the first install, it started to make the XP folder on your F:\ drive, which, the way you had it set up, old drive as slave, actually was your C:\ dirve, before you moved it.

Your install folder should be in your C:\Windows folder, or possibly a C:\WindowsXP folder. Deleting it might do more harm than good at this point, as your bootloader would not be able to find it, and may hang with an error message.

You may, with help from someone other than me, be able to find the entry in the Registry to delete the 3rd boot option. I generally keep out of the Registry, unless it is for an explicit virus removal or some such, with detailed instructions.

The only other alternative is to install again, onto C:\drive as new install, do not upgrade, this will install to C:\ again, in a separate WinXP folder.

I think you should just live with it till you have a problem that calls for a wipe/re-install.

Cheers,

George