Sorry another one - this time about a new hdd and XP

[onehunga]

Sorry, am full of questions today! I have in my possession a nice shiny new hdd with 120gb of capacity and a copy of windows XP. My current operating system is Win 98se and my present drive of 40gb is just about full. I tried upgrading to XP about 6 months ago but got a warning that lots of my drivers were out of date. I was loath to accept the upgrade as I wasn't sure how many of my devices would run under XP following the upgrade and if there were compatible drivers around.

I have seen on this forum a few comments along the lines of "a clean install of XP is the best". That got me thinking...

Is it possible to install XP onto my new hdd (once it is formatted I guess)? Presumably I would boot up as normal with Win 98se still running on the old hdd? Then insert the XP installation disks but change the destination to be the "new" hdd? Then what:-

- install all the drivers onto the new hdd? (XP versions I guess)
- install all my software onto "new" hdd
- copy across data to new hdd
- reformat "old" hdd so that I would have additional storage and get rid of any nastys lurking there?
- change bios to boot from "new" hdd

Any thoughts or suggestions about the best way to go about it would be much appreciated.

[Danza]

Just do a quick Google search on 'Dual boot 98 and XP' and you'll get loads of hits. Just had a quick look and this was the first thing to come up....

http://forums.devshed.com/t57635/s.html

Looks like you should be ok to install XP on the new HDD, then it's up to you if you want to keep it as a dual boot, transfer your files about etc.

ps, I'm not a propper computer bod, so don't just go on my say-so.

[ORAC]

Your present drive has all your data. Since you have a new drive, I'd keep your present drive to one side as a spare and use the new one for your XP installation.

Step 1 - preparation.

Make a list of of all the components in your machine and go to the manufacturers sites and down load the latest/XP drivers. Make sure you have the original CD where you can't find a new one. Burn the drivers to a CD or store them on your present drive.

Step 2 - Swop the drives.

Take out your present hard drive and put it safely to one side. Set the jumper on your new drive as the Master (See comments below about Master/Slave) and insert in place of the original drive.

Step 3 - BIOS.

Reboot the machine, go into the BIOS as it boots (normally the DEL key) and get it to detect the new drive. Go to the boot order and set it to boot from the CD first. Insert the XP CD into the CD drive. Save and exit and let it reboot.

Step 4 - Installation.

Follow the XP instruction to create a partition and format the drive using NTFS. Follow the instructions. Insert the original and/or new driver CDs as requested. If not, accept the default XP driver and go to step 5.

Step 5 - Reinstallation of old drive.

Set the jumper of the old drive to Slave and add it to one of the other IDE connectors. Reboot back into BIOS again to make sure it is detected, save and exit.

Step 6 - Copy Data.

The old drive should now be present as the D drive. If you have saved new drivers for any components, go into the control panel/system/hardware manager, select the component/properties and point the system at the location of the driver on the D drive. Repeat as necessary. Reboot as required.

Step 8 - Programmes & Data.

Load all the application and other software programs you need. Copy all the files you want to keep off the old drive.

Step 9 - Reformat the Old Drive.
Go into Computer Management, select Disk Management and repartition/format the old drive in NTFS.

Master/Slave

There are 2 IDE connectors/cables in most machines. The Primary and the Secondary. As far as you are concerned, they are identical. Each cable will support two devices, a Master and a Slave.

The thing to remember is that the drive with the operating system must be the Master on one of the cables and the CD drive should be Master on the second cable. The other HDD should be the Slave on one or the other.

The reason for the above is that the system will only operate on that cable at the speed of the slowest device - and a CD drive is far slower than your HDD slowing your machine down.

Having the second HDD on the other cable may seem, therefore, a mistake, but since all the system calls are to the C (master) drive it isn't a major factor one way or the other.

You could do all the above with the old drive in place after changing the drive jumpers, but there have been a lot of cases where people have hit the wrong keys and reformated their old drives losing all their data. So it's better not to take the risk for the sake of a few minutes.

[Mac the Knife]

PLEASE can we put the old canard about IDE devices on the same channel forcing everything to operate at the speed of the slowest device to bed. Essentially all mobos made in the last 5 years support independent device timing and have no problem running an ATA-100 and an ATA-66 device on the same channel at different speeds.

ATAPI devices like optical drives use a different protocol and may slow down a fast hard drive on the same channel (but they WON'T cause it to run at ATAPI speeds!)

There's a good discussion of the matter on http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming.html and http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance.html

And onehunga, I wouldn't format your old HDD for a LONG TIME (like 3/12), despite the good Orac's advice - the old drive works, and if all else fails or if you stuff up your shiny new drive or installation you can always stick it back in and be sorta back in business pronto. Once you've confirmed that your new setup is working and you've transferred your data across, take out the old drive, wrap it up tenderly and put it at the back of a cupboard. If everything is tickety-boo in April then I suggest that you buy a removable hard-drive caddy and use the old drive for backup data storage (don't leave you backed up data in the same machine or even the same house).

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Mac the Knife,

The new Dual IDE will run drives at different speeds but it has to be on a motherboard that supports it and it has to be setup properly to work.

I have found very few computers setup properly. For best performance you still want one drive per ribbon. (That way one drive does not need to wait for the other drive to finish with the IDE controller.)

A good test is to see if your computer is running the IDE with independent device timing is to use a benchmarking program like:

Future Mark's PCMark04 (http://www.futuremark.com/products/pcmark04/)
SiSofware's Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=&location=pinformation&langx=en&a=)
Simpli Software's HD Tach (http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach)

With SATA becoming mainstream now, the Master/Slave ATA Speeds is going to become a non-issue.

Take Care,

Richard

[onehunga]

Thanks all for the advice. Not formatting the old HDD is a gem of an idea Mac! Sounds like a nice wee project for the weekend! Never ceased to be amazed by how much knowledge there on good ole pprune.

Cheers

[Mac the Knife]

Most mobos fitted with an IDT IDE controller will support it - and what is there to setup? None of the three mobos I have that support IDT have any choices in the BIOS and none have any trouble running two drives at different speeds.

One drive per ribbon may theoretically be ideal but most people need more than two IDE channels and adding another controller (as I have in one machine where I needed five channels) seems a bit of overkill for the average punter.

As you say, SATA is now becoming mainstream, but I can't afford to change my main 160GB IDE drive in the excellent K7N2 Delta-ILSR for a serial one.....

Gotta agree that very few PCs are set up properly - it's rare to find one where a bit of tweaking and rearranging won't speed things up significantly (at least on the benchmarks).

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Mac the Knife,

Setup properly as in right ribbon, correct location on the ribbon, and correct jumper setting on the drive.

Take Care,

Richard

[Mac the Knife]

Thanks Richard, okay!

And also esp. the 80 conductor vs 40 conductor ribbons - I've seen several boxen where the orginal 80-way conductor has been "disappeared" and a cheap and slow 40-way substituted.