Installing a 2nd hard drive...problems.

[cerberus6]

I recently bought a Maxtor 80GB ATA/100 drive to be added to my existing system. Considering I'm running Win2k w/NTFS, MaxBlast II will not work, and I get prompted for a startup disk "preferrably from the OS you plan to install". I have my four Win2k boot disks, but apparently, they don't contain any files that Max Blast needs (I just get prompted to insert the start-up disk again). I don't have a Dos or Win95/98 startup disk. What's the easiest way to go about setting this drive up? Thanks.

[Mafiosy]

How do you connect it??? as master or as a slave??
There are jumpers on HD to change.
First see what IDE or SCSI slot u have and decide how to connect , then configure jumper set for proper use.

[BipolarBill]

If you are going to simply add the drive to the one you have, hook it up as master(on IDE2) or slave and use Disk Management (DISKMGMT.MSC) to create and format partitions. Disk Management is a beautiful tool - always has been. It's worth the conversion to NT just for that!

If you plan on replacing your old drive with this one, you'll need either Ghost or Drive Image floppies to copy disk to disk.

[cerberus6]

It's set as the Primary Slave, with the correct jumper setting, and it's recognized in the bios. Is Disk Management a Win2k feature? Sorry for being ignorant, but how do launch it?

[cerberus6]

Ah, got it. Thanks.

[Bovon]

I am going to make a WAG here cerberus6 because you did not let us know if the drive had been fdisked and formatted yet. If not, then you can boot it on any generic Win9x boot disk, fdisk and set it up, reboot and format it. If it is to be a slave drive, you will not have to create a DOS partition and make it active...that is only really needed when the drive is to be the master, bootable drive. You can also go to www.bootdisk.com and download DrDos7 boot disk, extract the file to a formatted floppy disk and put a copy of format.com and fdisk.exe on it, and boot up to an A:\ prompt.

Now, here is where some people get in trouble, or get lost. If you leave your master operating drive connected, and go into fdisk, you will need to change to drive 2 (or is it B?) I can't remember if fdisk names them dirve 1 & 2 or drive A & B...but, what you can do is, disconnect your master drive, jumper your new drive as master, boot on the diskette, fdisk and format it and there will be no mistakes and the possible choice of the wrong drive and wipe you OS off your master. Once you have it formatted, rejumper it as a slave, put the master back inline, connect the new drive as slave and boot up to your OS, and the new drive will be there, formatted and ready to use.

If you need some instructions with fdisk and setting up partitions, logical and extended drives, we can tell you that as well...

[Bovon]

Dang it Bill...I'm gonna have to start being less longwinded with my responses..you had not responded when I started the above

Whatever, glad you had a shorter way to do it..I have not used NTSF yet, so that one is out of my knowledge base. I suppose thats what you ment by "worth the conversion to NT".

[BipolarBill]

Sorry Bov...I am rather quick to the point. I miss stuff that way sometimes.

Oh yes...Disk Manager is fantastic, but it doesn't require you to use NTFS. It works with Fat16 and 32 as well. While it cannot resize active drives, it can do most everything else. When I first saw it a few years ago, I said "Why doesn't MS include this thing in Win9x?".

One super trick that you can do with NT is reletter the drives any old way you want. It loads itself by controller/drive/partition number rather than drive letter, making letters superfluous.

[cerberus6]

Thanks for the feedback Bill & Bovon. I should have mentioned if the drive was formatted or not. At first it wasn't (when I encountered the problem with Max Blast II). This may have been hasty, but it was the only alternative I could think of at the time: I booted from my Win2k Pro CD and formatted the new Maxtor with NTFS, only to abruptly quit before the 2k install could take place. Good news: I could see the drive in Win2k. Bad news: The drive's properties report it as a 74.5GB max capacity (80,023,715,840 bytes). I've noticed this before, for example, my other Maxtor 60GB is really only 57.2GB (61,459,259,392 bytes). Is it actually normal to notice these numbers when the drive purchased is advertised as a larger GB capacity? I reformatted the drive within Win2k using Disk Management, and it's still reported as a 74.5GB. Did I really screw up here?

[BipolarBill]

Did I really screw up here?

No. When the drive makers draw up specs on a drive, they state it with a GB as 1,000MB when a GB as reported by Windows is 1,024MB (actually correct since GB should be stated as binary). Pure marketing.

You're fine. You have 1000MB per GB - which is what most people expect. You just got rooked out of the other 64 that Windows says you should have.

[araaraara]

Actually a binary GB is 1048.5mb (1024kb * 1024). That's what FDISK has told me.

[BipolarBill]

Yeah...math was never my strong suit. My previous post is all screwed up, but I hope I got the idea across. :o

Here's a clearer link to what araaraara is saying:

http://www.goldenram.com/support/hd.asp

[userserver]

Originally posted by cerberus6
....The drive's properties report it as a 74.5GB max capacity (80,023,715,840 bytes). I've noticed this before, for example, my other Maxtor 60GB is really only 57.2GB (61,459,259,392 bytes). Is it actually normal to notice these numbers when the drive purchased is advertised as a larger GB capacity? I reformatted the drive within Win2k using Disk Management, and it's still reported as a 74.5GB. Did I really screw up here?

Drives are sold based on unformatted capacity. The formatting process uses 5-10% of the drive capacity depending on the O/S and the drive size. The formatting process sets up File Allocation Tables, sector start and end tags, and marks bad sectors.

[Bovon]

Originally posted by BipolarBill
Sorry Bov...I am rather quick to the point. I miss stuff that way sometimes.

No problem at all Bill, I take forever to form a response in my feeble mind, then try to type it, proof read it then hit the reply button, during this time, most people have eaten lunch, shaved, showered, shampoo'd ect ect..

Oh yes...Disk Manager is fantastic, but it doesn't require you to use NTFS. It works with Fat16 and 32 as well. While it cannot resize active drives, it can do most everything else. When I first saw it a few years ago, I said "Why doesn't MS include this thing in Win9x?".

Ok, where can I get it?, or does it come with NT or Win2K...and if so, will it work in Win9x? or is this only for Win OSs written based on NT technology.

One super trick that you can do with NT is reletter the drives any old way you want. It loads itself by controller/drive/partition number rather than drive letter, making letters superfluous.

Now, that sounds good. I have one now I need to swap around. When I installed my burner, it took the drive letter the CD-R had, and some of my apps use a CD, and now I must use the burner to read the CD from the apps..kinda frustrating.

[cerberus6]

Thank you B Bill for the link, and userserver for your input. I can always count on good info at this site.