installing 2 new hdd

[RatpiK45]

im going to install 2 new hdd's and i would like some info. i know that i should start with the basics when i install w98-2, no sound card and the like but can or should i put both hdd's in at the same time? i would also like to know if i should partition them and or use fat 32? it is a gaming machine and i would like to get the most performance out of it. the hdd's are wd 10.2 gb ata66, should i use the 33 or the 66? should i have one as the master and one as slave or should i run them both as masters? they will both be on the primary as i have my cdroms on the secondery. thanks, PAT

[Underclocked]

If you are installing Win98, I see no reason not to have all your cards installed initially, unless you know something about your particular combo which would necessitate otherwise.
Your motherboard very likely doesn't support ATA-66, so using that isn't really a choice unless you have a Promise card or similar.
My understanding is the gains are small in any event.
I would use FAT32, leave the master as one partition, and split the slave in two equal partitions. Yes, one must be set as master, the other slave.
You could use the final 5X GB partition for keeping installs, music, and archives. Use the slave's first partition to make an exact copy of a clean install from the master drive and should the master develop a problem, you can easily boot from the slave by changing a jumper and the cable connections.
Anyway, that's the route I would take.

[Axel]

What are you going to do with all of the hard drive space? - Do you ever erase anything?

To be on the really safe side, I'd install the master drive first and make a partition intended for the operating system and perminant application software only.

Just think to the future when you start a scandisk and defrag on a full 10GB drive - hope you have a good movie collection to pass the time. I prefer managible partition sizes myself.

Once you have the one drive just how you like it, then install the other drive with the following in mind.

Do you intend to access this drive at the same time (relative to you) as the master hard drive? - How about at the same time as the CD-ROM??

Depending on your answer, you'll want to put it as a slave on the primary IDE cable, or perhaps as the master on the Secondary IDE cable with the CD-ROM - which-ever will cause the least amounts of conflicts within your system.

If I had two drives like that now, I'd park the second drive on the CD-ROM cable as the secondary master and use it for back-ups and perminant storage.

The idea is, for max speed, have only one item running on a IDE cable at a time.

[theCorvetteDoctor]

Thanks to Axel for the info on the "one per cable" note. I had wondered how much impact that would do.. I've just delivered a machine I did just that way cuz I'wuz short a cable, oops