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Home > Archive > General Discussion > February 2001 > Adding a hard drive
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Adding a hard drive
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| I'm wondering if anyone can give me some advice. I am trying to set up a practice lab at home with NT. What I have to work with at the moment is a laptop running '95 (which has no data that I want to keep so I can reformat this whole drive) and a Gateway desktop computer running '98 that has all of my personal data on it that I don't want to tamper with. The Gateway has a Pentium II 450 Mhz processor with 64 MB RAM. I want to add a hard drive to the Gateway so that I can double boot NT and '98. Has anyone done this and can you tell me if this worked out ok for you? To dual boot, will I have to change the bios every time I boot to choose the operating system, or will I get an automatic screen asking which system I want to choose? Also, do you think I need to add more RAM? Thanks for any advice. | |
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| For some real good advice on Multi-booting go here http://support.microsoft.com/suppor...RCH&SPR=WIN2000
Also I can highly recommend Partition Magic with Boot Magic for multi-booting That is what I use.
Your bios points to C: The boot sector for the op system to boot so you have to make some change to that drive no matter what you do.
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MCP A+ | |
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| You know ... now that I'm thinking about it, if I am adding a hard drive, I wouldn't be "dual-booting" at all. There would be no need to partition the drive. THat is what I am trying to get away from. But with two different hard drives, with two different operating sytems, I am wondering how I would access each drive. I am thinking that I would have to change the bios when I boot to choose the drive. Am I correct or is there another way? Anybody have any advice/suggestions? Is this feasible? | |
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| hello sherry ,
is the system BIOS detecting the second hard drive, if no then change the jumper setting on the HD to make it secondary slave. hope this works.
Prince | |
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| Ok here is the deal with installing windows NT with Windows 98.
You have to install Windows 98 first and use FAT16 not FAT32 since NT4 requires to be able to read the Primary bootable partition. Next install NT4 on to the second hard disk. NT will install a boot loader (NTLDR) which allows you to choose your operating system to boot into. By default NT is selected and you have 30 seconds in which to change your choice.
If you require both OS's to have the ability to read both hard disks then both Windows 98 & NT will have to use FAT16 and not FAT32 and NTFS respectively.
At present my brain hurts so that's all I can give you at the moment. If you need more I'll be back on Monday or Tuesday.
Yeti the Helpful 
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MCNE, MCPx5, SCO ACE, LCP, Compaq ASE, CCIE Wannabe (part of the Wannabe Boffin Club).
http://www.yetigbr1.plus.com or http://www.mcse2000.plus.com or http://www.mcse-2000.org & http://www.mcse-2k.co.uk
MCSE2000 Forum http://pub34.ezboard.com/bmcse200067298
Mailto: yeti@zerg.com | |
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| I did a similar thing, to my pc but, I had a spare HD and I installed NT server on it...bare bones and nothing else, I then made it the slave with my win 98 as the master.
Do yourself a favour and don`t mess with your 98, simply install it on the other HD, you could also get a removable rack so you can switch back and forth....which is alot easier if you don`t want to go into the BIOs (assuming your BIOs supports it)
Then when I want to play with server I go into the BIOs and change the boot sequence "booting from the slave instead of the master"
Also one thing I noticed that smarty pants Yeti didn`t mention...depends on your chipset and mobo! NT server will NOT run on an Intel 810 chipset with 64 megs of RAM...well it will run with a bunch of freaking errors!
I actually have 4 OSs on my machine, 98 y2k pro, NT server, and win ME(yuck)
Hope this helps!
Mike
A+, MCPx one zillion! and all the other things that I deem important! ;-)
[This message has been edited by Mike_Mc (edited 01-30-2001).] | |
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| the best person who can help out in this matters is FREAK.
WHERE ARE YOU BUDDY.
prince | |
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| You know ... I have been told that this will be easy and now after reading these posts, I'm not so sure. Yeti - 98 is already installed on my present hard drive, and it is formatted fat 32. That is why I need to install the second hard drive - which will be formatted fat 16 so that I can install NT. And Mike - I don't want to mess with my '98 system at all, so when you say to get a removeable rack, are you meaning that I would be removing the '98 hard drive when I wanted to boot up NT Server? Sorry that I'm unfamiliar with the removeable rack thing, but I'm very curious because the last thing that I want to do is lose my programs and data on my present '98 OS. Thanks so much for all advice posted here! | |
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| Sherry, a removable rack is something you can pick up at most pc stores for about $30.00.
Simply put it is a bracket that is the width of a CD-Rom and you mount it inside your puter, then the HD screws onto the actual removable drawer, wish I had a picture.
Go here to see what I`m talking about : http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=422
The best thing to do is unplug your HD that has 98 on it and if you have room you can place the other HD inside your puter, then plug that one in, put you boot floppy in and start it up.
The setup I have is 3 HDs and like I said 98 is the master and NT the slave,the other HD is hooked up as a Slave with my CD-Rom.
My BIOs supports booting to whatever I want, whether it be my primary master or slave or my secondary slave.
Its a pain in the butt to go into the BIOs but it beats having to physically changing the jumpers all the time!
I used a removable drawer at first which was great as each HD had its own OS, then switched over to my present system with 3 HDs and 4 OS`s.
One drawback though is that when I switch the BIOs settings and boot to NT server on the slave I get a page file error, but when I use the drawer I don`t, the reason why is because my master is Fat32 and NT is really fussy about whats connected to it.
To make your system work properly I recommend that you get a removable drawer, or (not recommened) leave you system wide open and leave the screws off the HD so you can plug in different HDs that are set up for your puter.
I also have switches (double pole double throw) I can put in my machine that will turn the power off to any particular HD I want to use, this eliminates the need to worry about jumper settings on the HD as the HDs can all be set to master.
If you are impatient like me you set up your other HD with NT then go and get a drawer thing.
Hope this helps, I assume you know to make NT boot disks before you plug you other HD in?
Mike
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| I got a program called System Commander 2000.
I had win98 installed. System Commander created a partition, formatted it to my specs, and prompted me to install a new operating system. It will handle up to 100 OS's. I have had no problems with it at all. I also tried partition magic but found it harder to use.
I have 2 computers using system commander so right now I have 2 networks using only 2 computers. One network uses win98. The other one is running NT. I plan on installing linux on a 3rd partiion soon. That will make 3 networks using just 2 machines. I also just got a copy of win2k server I guess that will make 4 networks. Also I plan on learning novel soon. I think I need bigger hard drives. lol
good luck
-- Mark |
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