Windows XP on slave hard drive

[rbtree]

i still don't understand why you feel you need another OS on your slave drive.

like i said, mine is blank and when i want, i just create a new folder in it when i need to store something.

unless you are going to put a different OS on it, i see no reason to bother adding one. every time you boot up, your system is going to ask you which win xp you want to boot into....PITA.

make your extra drive a slave drive via the jumper pins, boot up. then go to my computer, right click on it and format it. once done, open it and create a new folder and name it what you want. you can copy all of your pictures to that folder, and, once done, you can clear the ones on your C drive. you can ctear another folder for your documents or any thing else you want to store on it.

Not true.

I have o/s on each of my three installed HD's......The BIOS automatically boots from the C drive, and the others are given higher numbers. The o/s and most programs on those drives are not accessible, but all files are, of course. If I want to use a different HD as the main, I simply switch the cables. If you have a newer system that uses SATA drives and connectors, no jumpers are needed or even available.

I have a conflict with XP Service Pack 3 and my motherboard that has been hard to solve, so am running SP 2 on the operable drive. The other two simply won't boot at all when used as the C drive, but of course work fine as slaves. I now have a 4th drive installed that is empty. Eventually, I'll clone the SP2 drive to a partition on it, so I'll have a usuable back-up in case of failure of the main. Then, maybe, someday, I'll solve the SP 3 issue.....

A bit off topic, but I got the last drive for $47. It's a refurbished 750 gig drive. My other three are all WD, 250, 320 and 320 gig. Prolly cost close to $300 total! Amazing how low prices have dropped. Even solid state drives are coming down.....

[gallegosmike]

Forget a slave drive.... Assuming you have fast cpu and at least 2Gb of ram. Use "microsoft virtual pc" and save your virtual machine file to your second hard drive.

I use virtual pc to run old ms operating systems going back to win 3.11. and dos 5.0 . Also I keep a vm(virtual machine) of windows 2000 on a thumb drive for trouble shooting on clients machines.

Now remember you need xp pro(or vista business/win7 Pro) to get all the benefits of virtual pc plus a dual core cpu and alot of ram. I will run on lower system /o/s , but not so great.

[KMB]

mga, I see what he's doing now. He wants the OS on the second drive to be a backup, a mirror image of his current setup.

Thank you.

Kevin, keep in mind that a clone will take up exactly the same amount of space as the original. It's a byte-by-byte copy.

There is a good free cloning program available, called Clonezilla. We use it where I work (which is a big company that can buy the best).


http://www.clonezilla.org/


For doing backups, try Karen's replicator. Freebie! I've been using it for years:

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp

Yep, aware of that. I've had a couple cloning programs recommended to me...I'll add Clonezilla into the mix of my research.

Kevin

[KMB]

Forget a slave drive.... Assuming you have fast cpu and at least 2Gb of ram. Use "microsoft virtual pc" and save your virtual machine file to your second hard drive.

I use virtual pc to run old ms operating systems going back to win 3.11. and dos 5.0 . Also I keep a vm(virtual machine) of windows 2000 on a thumb drive for trouble shooting on clients machines.

Now remember you need xp pro(or vista business/win7 Pro) to get all the benefits of virtual pc plus a dual core cpu and alot of ram. I will run on lower system /o/s , but not so great.

My system is going on 7 years old. I have RAM coming to upgrade my RAM to the systems 'supposed' max. of 2GB. My current hard drive is only 30GB. My new WD hard drive is 320GB. I know, my system is in the stone ages compared to what's available, but it has worked for me and my line of work. Funds for a new system are not available, so I'll do these upgrades for now.

I said all that to say that it sounds like the virtual pc won't work very good on my system.

Kevin

[Taxmantoo]

I'm triple boot on one drive. It was a little tricky because I had a proper XP install disk but for Vista I just had the factory restore disks.
I partitioned a 1TB drive with a Linux CD, made a pair of 25GB partitions, a 50GB, and a 830GB.
I ran the Vista restore disks on the 50GB, then fired up Linux and unmounted the 50GB so the XP install wouldn't find the Vista and throw a hissy fit. Then I installed XP on one of the 25GB. Then I installed Linux on the other 25GB with the Linux multi-boot manager. All the programs and data go on the 830GB partition.

[mga]

mga, I see what he's doing now. He wants the OS on the second drive to be a backup, a mirror image of his current setup.



Kevin, keep in mind that a clone will take up exactly the same amount of space as the original. It's a byte-by-byte copy.

There is a good free cloning program available, called Clonezilla. We use it where I work (which is a big company that can buy the best).


http://www.clonezilla.org/


For doing backups, try Karen's replicator. Freebie! I've been using it for years:

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp

ok...understood now.

but, why not just use the backup option and store it on the slave drive in a folder called bkt?

aside from email contacts, favorites, documents, and pictures, what else is there to really back up? if you have a hard crash on the C drive, you just re-install win xp then simply copy your saved files from your slave drive.

i do that all the time for people when i'm going to re-format their hard drives. i'll throw a slave drive in and just copy the stuff they want to save.

[CORNFEDMIDGET]

My system is going on 7 years old. I have RAM coming to upgrade my RAM to the systems 'supposed' max. of 2GB. My current hard drive is only 30GB. My new WD hard drive is 320GB. I know, my system is in the stone ages compared to what's available, but it has worked for me and my line of work. Funds for a new system are not available, so I'll do these upgrades for now.

I said all that to say that it sounds like the virtual pc won't work very good on my system.

Kevin

Kevin,

If your mobo is too old (which it probably is), you will have to update the bios to have the mobo recognize the 320gb. If not, it will probably only recognize the drive as 150gb. Good luck.

[BlueRidgeMark]

I said all that to say that it sounds like the virtual pc won't work very good on my system.

A virtual PC has its place, but not as a backup.



Kevin, keep an eye on your local ads, and especially Craigslist. I recently got a P4 with 2 gig of RAM for the price of a bag of canned goods. Literally. A local city was upgrading their computers, and was giving away PCs for a donation to the food bank.

[BlueRidgeMark]

ok...understood now.

but, why not just use the backup option and store it on the slave drive in a folder called bkt?

aside from email contacts, favorites, documents, and pictures, what else is there to really back up?

All of your programs, settings, drivers, etc. Most backup programs won't touch those. You need a clone for that. If you go the reinstall route, you'll spend many hours getting your system back to where it was. And that's assuming that you have all of the installation disks for your programs! If you don't, you are in Misery City.


A clone is easy, too.

[Brmorgan]

Yeah if you're using a 30 GB right now, I'd have my suspicions that your computer might not be able to use all of a 320GB without a BIOS update, and that's assuming one is available. You'll have to find out the manufacturer of your motherboard if you don't know already. And you're definitely going to want to use the 320GB as your primary drive - it's going to be an order of magnitude faster than the 30GB you're working with. On a similar note, I hope you're getting a P-ATA IDE drive; I doubt your computer has SATA support if it came with a 30GB.

To avoid getting a boot menu, you're going to have to install Windows to the new drive with the old one disconnected, otherwise the installer will usually see the existing installation and put it in the bootloader. Once Windows is installed you can reconnect the old drive and access its contents. Keep the OLD drive as the Slave though; although the best option would be to make it the Master on your secondary IDE channel, and make your CD/DVD burner etc. the secondary Slave. When your drives are on different channels, file transfers between them can be much faster.

[BlueRidgeMark]

Yeah if you're using a 30 GB right now, I'd have my suspicions that your computer might not be able to use all of a 320GB without a BIOS update...

Okay, folks second comment on this. Please read Kevin's posts again!

My current hard drive is only 30GB. My new WD hard drive is 320GB.

Two physical hard drives. One is 30 gig. One is 320 gig. No mention of not being able to use all 320 gig (which should format to about 298 gig).

[KMB]

On a similar note, I hope you're getting a P-ATA IDE drive; I doubt your computer has SATA support if it came with a 30GB.

Thanks and done. I did buy the right one.

Yeah if you're using a 30 GB right now, I'd have my suspicions that your computer might not be able to use all of a 320GB without a BIOS update, and that's assuming one is available. You'll have to find out the manufacturer of your motherboard if you don't know already.

Okay, folks second comment on this. Please read Kevin's posts again!

Two physical hard drives. One is 30 gig. One is 320 gig. No mention of not being able to use all 320 gig (which should format to about 298 gig).

CORNFEDMIDGET first brought this to my attention, and because of my nature, I looked into it on the WD service and support (I would like access to the full 320GB...but will probably never use it all). According to the info I read there, my BIOS might only read 137GB of the 320GB. There is info on what to do if my system will not recognize the full capacity of my new hard drive. Since I have an Intel chipset, they say to install The Intel Application Accelerator to fix this. I'll try to get a hold of someone at Intel to get more info. Another solution they offer is to buy a suitable IDE controller card, and also to have the right Service Pack of Windows XP installed (I have SP3).

And you're definitely going to want to use the 320GB as your primary drive - it's going to be an order of magnitude faster than the 30GB you're working with.

To avoid getting a boot menu, you're going to have to install Windows to the new drive with the old one disconnected, otherwise the installer will usually see the existing installation and put it in the bootloader. Once Windows is installed you can reconnect the old drive and access its contents. Keep the OLD drive as the Slave though; although the best option would be to make it the Master on your secondary IDE channel, and make your CD/DVD burner etc. the secondary Slave. When your drives are on different channels, file transfers between them can be much faster.

So if I simply do the cloning to the new hard drive, when I restart the computer, a boot menu will appear? I don't want to reload my other programs one at a time all over again...that's why cloning sounds the easiest. So if at the boot menu, it is just a matter of picking which hard drive to boot from and going from there, that shouldn't bother me. If I'm missing something...let me know.

Using the newer, bigger hard drive as the master makes sense. I'm not to sure about primary and secondary IDE channels. I do have the info on which pins the jumpers should be for master and slave setups.

Kevin

[BlueRidgeMark]

CORNFEDMIDGET first brought this to my attention, and because of my nature, I looked into it on the WD service and support (I would like access to the full 320GB...but will probably never use it all).

Famous last words! Kevin, the rule is this: Over time, computer data expands to fill all available space, plus 10%. It's kind of like garage junk. It just grows.

According to the info I read there, my BIOS might only read 137GB of the 320GB. There is info on what to do if my system will not recognize the full capacity of my new hard drive. Since I have an Intel chipset, they say to install The Intel Application Accelerator to fix this. I'll try to get a hold of someone at Intel to get more info. Another solution they offer is to buy a suitable IDE controller card, and also to have the right Service Pack of Windows XP installed (I have SP3).

Hmm. Never heard of the Intel Application Accelerator before. Here's what I found on it.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/


The link on that page about large hard drives is 404. I have a feeling you aren't going to get anywhere with that.

Probably the easiest solution is to buy an IDE controller card, like this one:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc6vnq7

So if I simply do the cloning to the new hard drive, when I restart the computer, a boot menu will appear?

No, you'd have to install a dual-boot system for that.

If you use cloning as a backup, you'll need to make sure you do it periodically, just like you back up data files. Then, if your OS gets corrupted, you can boot with a Clonezilla disk (see Clonezilla site for instructions), and restore the cloned image. This will overwrite your corrupted OS with the good clone image. Then, you take out the Clonezilla disk, reboot, and you are back in business. Your OS (and all its settings and programs) are now back to where they were.

If you installed a new program between the time you last back up (made a clone image) and the time you do a restore, that program would need to be re-installed.

[KMB]

Famous last words! Kevin, the rule is this: Over time, computer data expands to fill all available space, plus 10%. It's kind of like garage junk. It just grows.

Hmm. Never heard of the Intel Application Accelerator before. Here's what I found on it.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/

The link on that page about large hard drives is 404. I have a feeling you aren't going to get anywhere with that.

Probably the easiest solution is to buy an IDE controller card, like this one:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yc6vnq7

I am running Windows XP Home Edition with the Service Pack 3. I have just found some info about how my version of Windows XP needs to have '48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) support for ATAPI disk drives in Windows XP' . Service Pack (SP) 1 has it, and the latest version of the ATAPI driver to have is 5.1.2600.1135 or later (for the Windows XP Home Edition...32-bit?). I found how to look up what version I have and I have version 5.1.2600.5512. So I should be good to go as far as my BIOS reading my new 320GB hard drive.

No, you'd have to install a dual-boot system for that.

If you use cloning as a backup, you'll need to make sure you do it periodically, just like you back up data files. Then, if your OS gets corrupted, you can boot with a Clonezilla disk (see Clonezilla site for instructions), and restore the cloned image. This will overwrite your corrupted OS with the good clone image. Then, you take out the Clonezilla disk, reboot, and you are back in business. Your OS (and all its settings and programs) are now back to where they were.

If you installed a new program between the time you last back up (made a clone image) and the time you do a restore, that program would need to be re-installed.

Understood. What I was wondering is when my new cloned hd is installed (slave or master), what will happen when I boot up my computer? Will it automatically boot off of the master drive?

Kevin

[Brmorgan]

I am running Windows XP Home Edition with the Service Pack 3. I have just found some info about how my version of Windows XP needs to have '48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) support for ATAPI disk drives in Windows XP' . Service Pack (SP) 1 has it, and the latest version of the ATAPI driver to have is 5.1.2600.1135 or later (for the Windows XP Home Edition...32-bit?). I found how to look up what version I have and I have version 5.1.2600.5512. So I should be good to go as far as my BIOS reading my new 320GB hard drive.

Sounds like you're all set as far as Windows is concerned. That means no guarantees as far as your BIOS is concerned though; that's stored on a chip on your motherboard and is the first thing to come into play, long before Windows boots from the hard drive. Neither will the IAA have any effect on the BIOS, just the ATAPI/IDE controller drivers. If you can find out the manufacturer of your motherboard it shouldn't be too hard to find some more info on the BIOS though.

Understood. What I was wondering is when my new cloned hd is installed (slave or master), what will happen when I boot up my computer? Will it automatically boot off of the master drive?

Kevin

If you do a perfect bit-by-bit copy of the drive including the boot sector, it should fire up just fine if it's set to be the Master. I'll make one more suggestion though, and that's for you to partition the drive. Make a small-ish boot partition to install Windows and your programs on, maybe 50GB or something, and then you can leave the rest in one block or divide it up further to organize things (one partition for photos, one for music, etc. which is what I do). That way if you ever do have to reinstall Windows, all your other data can be left intact on the secondary partition(s) if you need to erase the primary for some reason. Of course if you're planning on keeping the 30GB as a mirror backup of your working boot partition, you might want to make the boot partition the same size just to make things easier. There are programs available that will automatically keep both drives mirrored in perpetuity as you modify either one; I've never used one and I don't know what they cost though. As for master/slave jumpering, if your cables are oriented to make it possible, it's easier to just set them all for CSEL (Cable Select) and then the master/slave relationship is set by the drives' locations on the cable. I haven't worked with PATA much in the last few years, but I think the connector closest to the motherboard is usually the Master by default.

Okay, folks second comment on this. Please read Kevin's posts again!

Two physical hard drives. One is 30 gig. One is 320 gig. No mention of not being able to use all 320 gig (which should format to about 298 gig).

I think I was comprehending everything properly... I know the OP didn't bring it up, but a couple of us did just to make sure he was aware of it. It doesn't come up a lot anymore, but I was working as a computer tech at Staples at the time and it was a big deal back then. The discussion is around the fact that prior to Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows could only address up to 137GB of physical hard drive space due to bit-depth limitations; much like 32-bit Windows can only utilize up to 3.25GB of RAM, while 64-bit can theoretically address up to 16.8 Million TERABYTES (one TB = 1024 GB)!!! Addressable space rises exponentially as bit depth goes up - think of it as a giant spreadsheet where each bit represents a row or column.

Now, since that's only a software issue with Windows, it's pretty easy to fix with an update/patch regardless of what computer it's running on. However, computers made up until about 2001 to early 2002 also had this same limitation hard-coded into the BIOS chip on the motherboard, so that if you plugged in a hard drive over 137GB, the computer would recognize it but couldn't "see" anything above that because it was incapable of addressing it properly. The same problem has come up numerous times over the years; first there was a 512MB limit, then 2GB, 4GB, and then 8GB, when they fixed the problem long enough to take it to 137GB. I don't think we'll be hitting the 144 Petabyte limit of the new protocol anytime soon - 1 PiB = 1,000,000 GB! Though, my first computer ~15 years ago had a measly 250 MB drive; I'm now running 1.5 TB which is 6000 times larger and which cost a fraction of the old 250 back in the day.

Most motherboard/computer manufacturers provided BIOS updates to get around these issues on machines of that era; however if you had, say, a 1999 computer which was already obsolete by the time they fixed the problem around '02, you were likely SOL because manufacturers don't tend to waste time on old machines with such things. In these cases, the problem could generally be solved by an add-in controller card with its own drive translation BIOS. Speaking of which, I believe I have a Maxtor ATA/133 card kicking around here somewhere; if you need it you can have it for shipping costs. They were pricey back in the day but are of no use to me anymore with the new SATA drives.