Problem installing second hard drive as Master

Question

I have a Dell Dimension 4100 using Windows XP Home edition. I have upgraded with a Western Digital 160 GB Enhanced IDE/7200 RPM drive (Model # WD1600JB-OOEVA ). I booted from my original 20 GB (Western Digital model # WD200BB-75DEAO), which was still the Master, then ran Data Lifeguard for Windows. That initialized and partitioned the new WD 1600 into two partitions, one is FAT32 since my old hard drive was FAT32, and the other is NTFS. Data Lifeguard copied all of my old hard drive files to the FAT 32 on the new HD, which would include the Win XP operating system. I then swapped the old and new so that the new WD1600 would become the new Master. I changed the jumper setting on both to indicate the correct Master (new) and Slave (old). I have upgraded the BIOS from Dell's web site recently. I am unable to boot into Windows from the new hard drive, when both drives are connected and powered. However if I unplug the power to the old drive, which is the new Slave, then I can boot into Windows. The setup/BIOS recognizes both drives when they are powered.

How do I set it up so that I can use the newer, faster hard drive as the new Master and have my old drive as the Slave for backups, etc.? I could not find any Knowledge Base document showing the best way how to install the new hard drive as the boot drive keeping the old drive in the system as a Slave. Would it be better to convert all my files to NTFS? Should I have a single partition on the new hard drive. (Norton's GoBack does not work with a disk overlay.)

I still have all the files in duplicate on both hard drives so I could start over if that is the best solution.

BigBrother · Answer

Raboatman,

Set the jumpers on both drives to CS (Cable Select). Connect your new hard drive to the end of the IDE cable and connect the old drive to the middle connector. You may need to move your hard drives around to accomplish this. Check this Dell KB article for recommended placement of the hard drives:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1014085&l=en&langid=1&c=us&cs=19&s=dhs

Steve

raboatman · Answer

The first time I installed the new hard drive, I had it set with Cable Select (CS) for both and with the cable connection you suggested. It did not boot past the Dell page. It then gaves me the option to go to Safe Strart, or Last known good configuration, etc. but none of them worked. Then I changed to jumpers to Master and Slave, with exactly the same result. The only way at present to boot up the system is to use either the old drive alone or the new drive alone. I cannot have both running, which I would need to do to reformat the old drive prior to making it my storage drive.

What next? And the other part of the question previously asked is should I convert to NTFA from FAT32?

Storage, Drives & Media

Problem installing second hard drive as Master

Was this post helpful?