Installing my old HD to my new comp

[Scarlet]

I recently built a new computer and would like to use the old HD as the secondary (slave?) drive for it. Right now I have a 120gb HD as my main. When I tried to connect the two together using the IDE ribbon cables, my computer didn't detect either HD. Maybe I'm not suppose to do it like that? It was pretty hard getting both of them connected because the part of the cable that attaches to the Motherboard is so close to part I'm suppose to plug into the HD. Had to place the HD at just the right spot on the tray.

I hope my question wasn't too confusing Maybe I could of worded that better.

edit: Oh I forgot one more thing. If I manage to get it to work, how would I remote the old HD? I used Win98 on it and I'm running WinXP currently.

 

[CJJohnson]

It sounds as though you may have your IDE cable round the wrong way. The short stretch should be between the 2 HDDs. You need to change the jumpers on the back of your hard drives to master(for the main one) and slave, or Cable select if your drives/motherboard supports it.

It sounds as though both Drives are configured as master, and that will confuse the hell out of the motherboard.

 

[CJJohnson]

As for the second question, do you mean dual boot? so that you can use XP or 98. It is possible and it is easiest to set up on installation of an operating system, which it sounds as though you have already done. Not too sure how to do it after but there must be some utility like partition magic that can set this up for you.

 

[Scarlet]

Omg I'm such an idiot. Yea I had the cables on the wrong way. It was so obvious once you pointed it out -_- Thanks lol

On the HD's I don't want dual boot. I just want the second one to be a place where I put junk on it. I guess I'd have to reformat it, since it has Win98 on it from my older computer.

Thanks alot ^_^

 

[icemakr]

You said you were hooking it up as secondary slave, was that a typo. Are they still not detecting after you fixed the ide cables? Try all the jumper settings, even configurations that aren't listed in the specs. If anything hook them up as primary master and secondary master.

 

[CJJohnson]

Don't mention it. I've done worse things...but I ain't telling you any of mine ;-)

Probably best to format it once you've got everything you need off of it. If your running XP format as NTFS rather than FAT32 as it is more efficient and secure.

 

[CJJohnson]

icemakr, you can connect the second where you want. Sometimes it is an advantage to have it on the secondary if both drives are being used at the same time, as they don't have to share the same IDE bandwidth. ie. You could have the Windows swapfile on a second disk while windows is running from the first, more efficient.

 

[icemakr]

CJJohnson, I do understand all the logistics. I merely posed the question about drive placement because he had said he was hooking it up as secondary slave, but he was having complications with the IDE coming up short when hooking up both drives together, which means it would have been the primary slave.

 

[Nitestick]

i find it better to have a storage drive on the primary channel because i always put burners on the secondary channel. that way the transfer rates are faster if burning from the hdd. just mentioning that in case you have a burner in that rig, which you probably do

 

[CJJohnson]

I see what you mean icemakr, probably a typo.

Main HDD and Optical Drive (CD/DVD) on Primary and DVD/rw and second HDD on secondary. This way if you are going optical to optical they are not on the same channel.

The only downside with this is the DVD may drag down the speed of the HDD.

Personally, I have a PCI IDE controller that gives me more connections. A bit more complicated but worth it.