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skip56

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master or slave?

I am going to add a second hard drive to system. I do not have a back up for my original hard drive.after installing second drive will I lose all my info. if I make it the master drive? or can I copy the info. to the master from the slave after installing,formatting etc? or should I make the new drive the slave?
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micro66

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I agree with Micro66

If you want to use the new drive as your master buy Ghost or Drive image. They are easy, their instructions are simple to follow and they also allow you to make a compressed backup of your master disk which you can store on your slave.
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micro66

Powerquest Drive Copy is the version I see on shelves now, rather than Drive Image.  Frankly, I don't know what the difference is, but either should do the job.  Drive Copy was designed, as I recall, specifically for people who wanted to upgrade to a newer, bigger drive.

If the drives are of similiar vintage..ex. both support utra dma 33 for
instance, it should not matter which is a slave or master. Keep in mind,
only the first IDE drive(ide 0 in the bios) can boot Dos/Win9X drives.
So your original drive is ready to boot as master, the new is one is not.

I have had trouble with drives running different transfer modes. If
the Master is running udma and the slave is only capable of PIO mode X,
then the slower slave drive could run erattically or not at all.

On the other hand, If the Slower PIO mode drive is set to master,
and the newer udma is set to slave, the newer drive should be smart
enough to adjust, but of course you will lose the faster udma support
for the new drive.

In any case, I have had trouble booting and running  drives of different
vintage/modes, but I have never lost data.

Just be carefull that the new and old drive are detected properly
and identified properly at the bios level. Then, if you need to run
fdisk, be carefull you are accessing the proper drive before setting
any partitions. Same goes of course for formating.

This is what I would try first.

Set the new drive as a slave on the channel with the old. Check to
make sure if you have explicitly set the older boot drive as Master.
Some drives run unjumpered as a stand alone, but must be jumpered as
"Master"  if a slave is present.

Boot to bios and Auto-detect both disks to see if the bios is reporting
CHS and size of both drives correctly. If so,

Reboot to a Dos screen by holding down f8 on the reboot and choose
command prompt only.

Run fdisk..If you are running Win95B or later, it will ask you
if you want large disk supprt. If the drive is larger than 2.1 gigs
you will have to answer yes if you want the drive to have only
one partition.
 
After Fdisk starts to a menu you should have 5 choices, the 5th
being Change Current Fixed Drive.

Change to the drive that is the new drive.
Check partition information is correct so you know you have the right drive.
Set your Partitions. DO NOT set the New partition as active at this time.

Exit FDISK and do a COLD reboot of your system and get back to a command prompt.

Change to the assigned drive letter of  any new drive partitions  and check they are  empty. If you only created One partion and only have two
drives the new drive should be letter D:
 
Log back to C: and format any new partition(s).
Use format /s on the first New partition . These system
files will enable the drive to be the boot drive later when
you switch master/slave.



Reboot to Windows and see that the new drive is mapped in.
Now you can go to a command prompt and use xcopy to copy
all the contents of your old drive to the first partition of the new
drive. Verify the files are all copied.

If you are not sure you have a boot floppy create one now.
Make sure the boot floppy has a copy of FDISK on it.

Reboot and check bios has" boot to floppy" as the first boot device.
Exit bios and see if the floppy disk boots and enables you to access all
drives.

exit windows and power down.

Switch the master/slave setup so the new drive is the boot drive.
Reboot to the floppy and run FDISK .

Set the primary partition on the new drive to active.

Reboot to windows and your new drive should load windows
and have all of the data.

here is great page summarizing dos 7.0 including using fdisk
http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/


Good Luck..


Oops!  From Tandy's comments above:

"Change to the assigned drive letter of  any new drive partitions  and check they are  empty. If you only created One partion and only have two
drives the new drive should be letter D:
 
Log back to C: and format any new partition(s).
Use format /s on the first New partition . These system
files will enable the drive to be the boot drive later when
you switch master/slave."

Be very careful when you format that you are not formatting drive C: !!  That's the real danger of the manual procedures that Tandy has outlined.  If you go slowly, follow directions precisely, know what you're doing, and don't misunderstand a step, you'll be fine.  However, if you are not 100% sure, and you don't have a complete, verified backup of everything on your old hard drive, you may want to have some help.  That's what the price of utility software gets you, plus a bit of insurance, so to speak.



There is a much simpler solution:

*IF* you get a Western Digital brand drive, they include a floppy with a handy little utility which moves all your data (boot sector data and all) to the new drive from the old one (even different sized drives).  What you do is plug in the new drive as the slave, boot up on a dos floppy, run WD's utility, let it chug away for half an hour, unplug the old drive and boot up your previously existing install on the new one!  Simple!  

I've used this utility before to do exactly this and it works great.  I used it to  set up a new 4.5Gb from a 750Mb drive.

After its all done you can then set up your old drive as a secondary if you want and just erase everything on it.
All the major HD manufacturers have their own version of this software.  Maxtor has MAXBLAST and so on, so you're not only limited to Western Digital drives
Very true.  I have them from WD, Maxtor, and Seagate.  I forgot about them because many times I buy bare drives, and they don't come with anything.  If you get a boxed drive, it'll probably have some software to help you, but you need to check on that.  If you order off the web, make sure you ask about that software.
>>micro66
I don't see any "oops" in my directions if followed carefully.
I give skip56 enough credit so that he will be  carefull enough
not to format his original drive. I do aggree though that you
must be very carefull with each step. Sorry skip56 if I did not
make that clear, and thanks to micro66 for pointing out that
important precaution.

A good reliable disk utility takes out the guess work.
However,I have seen disk utility programs that have trashed HD's.
Using the above procedure does not require any extra tools.
It puts you in charge of the procedures and cost nothing.
I suppose the safest way would be to pay someone else to do it.
I gave directions so someone could do it themsleves with the tools
they have on hand.

An added precaution one could do to the above
procedure is to disconnect the original drives power
and ide connector and do the fdisk and format
on the new drive with a boot floppy.


Avatar of skip56

ASKER

I see I should have sent more info. ok I bought a 20.4 gig. maxtor hard drive ultra/66. I have a 3.2 gig western digital IDE drive in system. the new drive came with a floppy disk that states boot up first before installing new drive. but that does not sound right to me. if that were the case I would lose all info. if I make the new drive the slave is it ready to recieve info from the master or how do I go about this proceedure? I want the new drive as the master.
Here is something you can try skip56.

Get the Norton Ghost program (trial version).

Get ready a bootdisk.

Set the new HDD as Slave.

Steps:    
    1. Run Norton Ghost and create a Norton Ghost Disk from the program.

    2. Boot the system up with a bootdisk.

    3. Insert the Norton Ghost Disk created into the disk drive.

    4. Run GHOST from dos prompt.

    5. Select Load -> Image -> Disk

    6. Press SpaceBar to continue.. (twice)

    7. Press Tab key and press Enter.

    8. Once the process finish... Exit Norton Ghost and remove the Master HDD and Set the Slave HDD to Master.

    9. The you can format the old HDD and use it as Slave...

Hope this help...

bye

>>skip56:

You said:  "states boot up first before installing new drive. but that does not sound right to me. if that were the case I would lose all info."

If you boot from a floppy and follow their directions, you won't lose any info on your hard drive.  The software on the floppy is simply going to "prepare" the old hard drive for the transfer.  You do what it says, then you install the new drive, then do what it says.

If I were you, I'd just follow the directions that came with the new drive.  It'll walk you through what everyone here has been walking you through, not knowing you had that diskette.