Having a little trouble with instructions I have to install another internal slave hard drive on an E521. Installed drive and initialized. Had trouble finding how to format thought I could right click but the option was not there. Did find it later under volume. This is a spare drive so don’t think I need to partition but only format I guess. So decided to use the install CD that can with the Western Digital 160 GB HD. I screen came up and said it would have to make changes to windows registry and restart because my system was not configured to use large drives over 137GB. I did this anyway even if it did not make sense to me. I already had a larger 250GB HD they came with my PC. So how could it not be configured to accept large drives? Anyway next tried the software again and said it could not proceed because the drive is set as a dynamic drive instead of a basic drive. Told me to go back to Windows disk management to change. So went to disk management and the help menu. It said to delete all volumes and right click on drive and change to basic. Deleted volume (I had started formatting but canceled after I noticed it was calling this a dynamic disk and my master drive is basic also) Right click on the new drive and the option is not there to change to basic. Cant seem to find clear instructions on how to do something like this that I thought should be simple and other people would need the info. Also still don’t understand the change to windows registry for larger drives. Should not have needed this. Can I change it back and skip the cd software.
Did get it fixed. Just had to do it thru the DOS command prompt.
But could you confirm to change this to master drive all I have to do is switch cables inside PC. I once I test this new backup boot drive I will go back to the original master drive and use this for a backup. What is best way to store this.
problem solved. Just had to do this thru the DOS command prompt.
Since this is a backup boot drive any suggestions how I should store this.
1. no changes, just leave connected as a slave drive.
2. Unplug power and data cable inside PC
3. Just turn off the sata plug it uses in bios setup.
I don't have the E521, but on the 9100/9200 I can make any SATA drive the "master" or preferred boot device by changing the boot order in the BIOS setup or by selecting the drive in the F12 menu.
As you found, you do need to enable SATA drives in the BIOS setup before they can be accessed. Similarly, you want to disable them if they are no longer in the system to prevent getting error messages.
RAYH78
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Posted February 17th, 2007 04:00