Hit Man X

As you may know, I get angry at computers pretty easy (stupid POS boxes of ****) anyway... how do I run two harddrives at once?

I have one that's got lots of info I want to transfer to my main HD. I have the second selected as the 'Slave' (hahahaha) and the main as the 'Master' (someone musta had a sick S&M fetish). I even moved the jumpers on the 'Slave' too with no avail.

If it makes a diff, the 'Slave' is from an EMachine and my main box is an HP if that makes a diff...

Thanks!

MacADaYear

Did you format the drive and install it?

JSmith

iTrader: (5)

If that 2nd drive you want to install as a slave has an OS on it you're going to need to format it first.

Flyer

iTrader: (1)

NO NO NO ... if you have stuff on it that you need/want DON'T format it!!!

Sounds like you have the hardware right ... the boot drive (the one that's already in there) should be set to master. It may have been set to cable select. The second one needs to be set to slave. That is if they are on the same IDE ribbon cable. The red strip on the cable always goes towards the power connector. Make sure you get that strip on the right side. Most drives nowdays are keyed, so you can only plug them up one way, bt some old ones aren't and I could see E-machines using some crap like that.

After that, you need to go into the BIOS and set all of the IDE options to Auto, that will keep you from having to manually input the specs for the hard drive, it also always for some small margin of error.

To be even more on the safe side ... you can put this second hard drive on the same ribbon cable as your cd-rom drive. Same princaples apply with the slave and master, it doesn't matter which is which, just so they aren't the same. Just make sure the boot drive is primary master.

Any questions let me know ... hardware is my specialty!

Hit Man X

Well a while ago I transfered a bunch of crap off my buds HD and he had an OS on his HD. We just set it up as a slave and was fine.

All the plugs/big flat cable is in correctly as is that jumper. I went to the BIOS and the HD came up in there. BUT when I try to find it on the system it's like it isn't here in the "My Computer" thing.

Only thing I can think of is the slave HD was setup w/ XP and mine is ME (sucks I know). My buds old one was Win 98...

Flyer

iTrader: (1)

OK .... so .. the BIOS recognizes it is there?

Go in the device manager (windows key and Pause/Break key, second tab on Windows 98/ME) and look to make sure you have to HDD's. There will be 2 HDD controllers more than likely, but you want to look for the actual HDD's. They should be something like Seagate, Maxtor, WD, etc ... not Intel, Via or whatever the hell shipset they use.

If it's in there, then it is definantly something to do wiht the partitions.

From your last post ... I assume you are using WInME and he was using Win98. Is this right? You mentioned something about XP ... if he was using XP, then your WinME isn't going to be able to read that dive because XP uses a different file system which the Win9x versions can't read. If that's the case, you better get his computer and put your hdd in his using his machine as the bitch. XP can read the other file systems, but not the other way around.

Flyer

iTrader: (1)

Forgot to say ... If the BIOS reads it ... it's good, everything should be working. If the BIOS sees the drive, then the drives should be listed in Device manager. If they aren't find the Hard Disk Controllers. Delete them. That will make the machine freeze up, but don't worry. When you reboot it, they will be found as new hardware and just follow the prompts through. That will force them to update the Windows hardware list with the new drive.

You might want to run Fdisk from a DOS prompt. Look at the partitions on the drive you want the info from. If they are unknown or NTFS partitions, or something other than FAT or FAT32, then revert to using his computer.

JSmith

iTrader: (5)

Ooopps, sorry forgot about that part.

Seems Flyer's got everything under control.

OBXMarine

iTrader: (2)

What about strapping the hard drives. Master and Slave. Was this mentioned already and I missed it?

Chingon

iTrader: (1)

I know on my Western Digital HD's there are three jumper settings, "Single or Master" "Master w/ Slave present" and "Slave"
Make sure those are set correctly of course.
I too am having computer problems...it's pissing me off.