Installing a new drive

[Power-B]

I'm tring to install a new drive, my system
has a small 1.3 gig drive now and I would
like to keep it as the master and use the
new drive as a slave, I set to jumpers, and
bios auto detects it now I have the small 1.3 gig drive formatted with fat16, can that be the problem? can I have two different formats on the same computer? oh the new drive is
8.7 gig.

also the primary IDE cable is being used by
the master and the cd-rom, so I installed
another cable on the secondary IDE slot
on the motherboard. I have the new drive
hooked into the secondary slot. Is that
ok?

as I said the bios detects the new drive
but windows don't, how do I fdisk and
format what windows don't detect?

anyways as you can see i'm NEW at this so be
kind :-)

[CMonster]

I fully understand your situation. First, I suggest you read any documentation that may have come with your new drive.


[list=1]
Yes you can have two different formats on the same computer, but that is not the problem since you seem to indicate that the drive has not yet been fdisked or formatted.
If you put the drive on the secondary IDE you better make it secondary master (not secondary slave) and just keep your other drives as they are - just in case you did not know. There is nothing wrong with that arangement, but many believe (self included) that hard disks belong together on the same IDE controller, and slower devices such as CDROMs should be on the other IDE channel. At this point I would leave it as it is, until you configure the drive and have it recognized by Windows.
To fdisk and format boot from a Windows startup disk and run fdisk from the command prompt. If your version of Windows supports FAT32 you have the option to enable large drive support - if you do not the drive will be FAT16.
Read your fdisk options carefully - NOTE: FDISK CAN DESTROY ALL DATA FROM A DRIVE -- BE SURE THAT YOU ARE FDISKING THE CORRECT DRIVE - to be sure I usually disconnect the primary drive and replace it with the new drive and fdisk THE NEW DRIVE as primary master with no other drives in the system. When Im done with fdisk and format I switch the drives around as I please.
In some cases it is necessary to update Windows Busmaster IDE controllers or enable both IDE channels to have Windows recognize a device on the secondary IDE cahnnel
[/list=a]


Hope that helps

[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 03-03-2000).]

[Power-B]

CMonster thanks you very much your help was
much appreciated Your suggestion on removing
my small C: drive and making the new one the
C: drive worked great. It's in and operating
fine thanks for your prompt reply