Help installing a secondary HDD

[John_P]

Hi,

I'm on a Dell Dimension 2400.

I've been having some problems with my Maxtor 6E040L0 40GB HDD so I'm going to get another HDD and use the Maxtor as a secondary (till it dies).

I don't have much experience with the hardware so I need help on a few particulars.

1. It looks like the CD-RW drive is on a secondary cable with an extra jack and bay for a DVD drive, whereas the current HDD is on a cable of its own with no other jacks.

Is there any reason not to put the second drive on the cable with the CD-RW drive?


2. What I was thinking about doing is first installing the new drive as a slave, booting to Windows XP to format and partition it, then switching it to the master and installing Windows.

Is there any reason why this shouldn't work?

Also, if I do it this way would I have to change anyhting in the BIOS?


Thanks,
John

 

[SOcRatEs]

Hello! Welcome to TechSpot

the CD-RW drive is on a secondary cable with an extra jack and bay for a DVD drive, whereas the current HDD is on a cable of its own with no other jacks.

Is there any reason not to put the second drive on the cable with the CD-RW drive?No reason just jumper them correctly.

What I was thinking about doing is first installing the new drive as a slave, booting to Windows XP to format and partition it, then switching it to the master and installing Windows.

I would install the new drive as stand alone. Install XP from cd and just let
Xp install, partition and format it, less steps involved.
G'Luck

 

[John_P]

I would, but I was hoping to transfer some data as well as create separate partitions for Window, Data, Pagefile, etc.

How should they be jumpered with a HDD and a CD?


Thank you,
John

 

[SOcRatEs]

kewl

I would, but I was hoping to transfer some data as well as create separate partitions for Window, Data, Pagefile, etc.

How should they be jumpered with a HDD and a CD?

I would run the HDD as master, on the end of data cable and cdrom as slave on the middle of datacable.
Once you have a stable system try MT'ing the old drive and do a
Maxtor low level format, all zerooo's.
It might fix it....

 

[John_P]

Thanks for your help!


John