Hard drive select question

[ptitterington]

I have a dual boot 98se and xp on one hd. 40gig 7200 seagate.
It is set to master ide1 and as i am starting to get a few problems that are annoying but liveable I am installing xp pro onto the spare hd 30 gig maxtor on raid 1.

My question is
In order to boot from the maxtor I am having to swop the jumper over and then swop the IDE cables, Is the cable select for this instance? also I have no paperwork for the maxtor and the Maxtor site just gives too much info what I need to know is the jumper options will they be the same as the seagate as they are not marked on the case.
I know that far left looking from behind is master, no jumper is slave but the rest I dont know.

thanks

 

[Vehementi]

What's the models of HD's you're working with? I could get the jumper settings for you.

You should be able to select what OS you want to boot from at startup then.

 

[ptitterington]

It is a Maxtor diamond max plus 45 7200 30.7gb at disk drive

Is there a diagnostic prog. that I can download, this xp is now freezing just like ME used to and on the other HD i have it installed same components running fine.
No virus according to norton and I have used reg clean to remove any old stuff.

arrrr
thanks

 

[ptitterington]

sorry the other is a seagate barracuda ATA IV
model st340016A 40 gig 7200

 

[Vehementi]

It's this drive right?

If so then click here.

 

[ptitterington]

Thanks thats the one. It wasnt laziness that I couldnt find it, I just got too much technical info. Ill have to find the other jumper or pinch one off something old.

Still trying to sort out cable select to boot off 1hd master on IDE1presently with dual boot 98se and xp home and 1hd master on raid1 with xp pro as an emergency backup and photo store.

 

[ptitterington]

Ok now I realise thanks to an excellent article that explains cable select
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCS-c.html
and I realise that It is not what I want.

I just would like to know if it is possible to boot from the 2nd HD without unplugging cables and resetting jumpers.

would it harm to set both to master and have a 3way rocker switch on the case so that while the machine is off I can cut the power to the hd that is not required.
My problem will come when I want both on together to swap files.

 

[Vehementi]

Very easily. Enter your BIOS and change the boot sequence. Consult your documentation to find the exact directions. Should be in the index or something. "Boot Sequence"

Mine goes like this:

1. Legacy Floppy
2. Hard Drive (WDC or ST)
3. CD-ROM (AOpen DVD or Sony Spressa)
4. Network

 

[ptitterington]

I can see that, but should I have the master and slave seperate cables on separate channels. Will I be able to boot from a slave if i select it as first boot device in the bios.
Oh and thanks for the help so far.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Yes, you should be able to boot. BIOS might have settings like 'HDD0', 'HDD1' and so on, these refer to your hdds. Select HDD1 and it should boot from your 2nd hdd.

 

[ptitterington]

I can see that, but do I set both hds to master.
I mainly wish to use my current hd that can dual boot c, or d and am using the other hd, presently set as G on raid as slave as a store for backups but it also has an operating system xp pro for when I use it in emergencies.
I would like to boot from either disk and be able to access the other.
And as I said before at the moment I have to unplug leads and switch jumpers.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I think you could make the computer boot from the hdd you have XP and edit XP's boot.ini. Search this forum, this has been explained several times (and I don't remember exactly )

 

[Vehementi]

No. Set one drive as master and slave, on the same IDE channel. It really doesn't matter which one you will be booting from.

Then, go into your BIOS and select the HDD you want to boot from. If you have two OS's on one HDD, then you'll be asked which to boot from right before the OS is loaded from the boot sector.

Doing it this way will allow you to boot from any drive you want, and access all the others.

Select the hard drive you boot most frequently from as your master.

 

[ptitterington]

Thanks that sounds good.

Will having both HDs on the same channel not slow them down or am I thinking about copying from cd to cd on the same channel