Hard drive storage on pc setup

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

I currently have an 80mb hard drive with a 40gb hard drive set as slave on one ide.

On the second ide, I have a dvd burner with a cd burner as slave to that.

The cd burner is cactussed and will be thrown away next time I open my pc up.

I've just ordered a 400gb hard drive (to be used as storage only) and what I want to do now is set that as a slave to my 80gb hard drive and move the 40gb hard drive to where my cd burner currently is. Can this be done, or should the dvd burner be slave to the 40gb hard drive?

So to sum up, my aim is to have an 80gb hard drive with a 400gb hd as slave on one ide and the dvd burner with the 40gb hard drive as slave on the other.

[tel]

Hi,

You should be able to connect up to 4 EIDE devices with most motherboards, however I suggest you try the following setup, remembering to set device jumpers accordingly.

Primary IDE Controller:
Boot Hard Drive = Master
Second Hard Drive = Slave

Secondary IDE Controller:
Third Hard Drive = Master
CD-ROM = Slave

Good Luck

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Makes perfect sense.

Thanks tel.

[Payrac-man]

Hi,

And dont forget to partition the 400gb drive and you will need to format it correctly or your PC will not see the full 400gb

[Bob T]

Rubbish, you only need to partition a large hard drive if you have a very old PC. All modern ones will see it as one big drive. Even older PCs can do this with a small free program from the hard drive manufacturers

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

I think my pc is about 5 years old (probably constitutes as being old), but I only use it to watch movies, record tv programs, basically it's a media centre. It's hooked up to my tv only.

With regards partitioning, is it a good idea to partition anyway on a drive that large as it cuts down on search time?

[Payrac-man]

Hi

If Bob T had taken the time to read your original post properly then he would have seen that it was obviously not a brand new PC as no new PC would be using a drive that small

Why are some people on this forum so confrontational?

If you have any probs installing the drive send me a PM 

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Have partitioned the drive into 4 sections, 3 at 100gb each and the other about 90gb (what was left over). Formatting each now, everything has gone to plan. I used partition magic.

Except I now have 4 drive letters each claiming to be a cd rom drive (which isn't physically in my pc anymore). I had removed my old cd rom drive to make way for this new hd, but it seems xp hasn't realised this. I tried uninstalling all references to cd roms under device drivers, but they still keep coming back. Any ideas how to get rid of these? Is it a BIOS job to remove these drives? I've also removed the floppy drive as I'd run out of 3.5" bays, and this is still showing under windows explorer.

Just to clarify, the 400gb drive is set to master with my dvd drive as slave under it.

Edit: Discovered 3 of the drives were because of demon tools (even though it wasn't running), but I still have my old cd rom and floppy drive there even though they are not installed. Strange.

[Payrac-man]

Hi

Sorry to be so long replying but have been away trying to sort out probs with my house build in the Lot. HDD should be primary IDE master and DVD secondary IDE master Primary and Secondary IDE slave positions can be used for additioal HDD's or DVD roms Just why WINXP sees the partitions as DVD drives is strange Try opening my computer, right click on one of the partitions and then look at the properties tag and see  what hardware XP has installed. Otherwise try reformatting using XP.Did you "ghost" your original "C" drive onto the new HDD?

All the best

Paul

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Cheers Paul.

Everything is running fine and hunky dory, thanks.

I didn't touch xp on the c drive, primarily because I accidentally left my xp cd in Australia before moving over, so reinstalling it would have been a little bit of a problem. All I have is the code for it :( Must get round to dl a version.