BleepingComputer.com: Installing A New Hard Drive

Here we go. If curious, please see this this recent thread for details. Here's a summary: Running W98SE on a six year-old Compaq model 7465. Hard Drive is 17GB with about 4GB on a D: partition holding (I assume) system backups. Everything running fine (even now) except suddenly unable to run ScanDisk or Defrag by any method in any mode. Compaq Diagnostics advises "Disk Protection System has failed, replace HD" Hard Drive by Western Digital (model WD170AA); downloaded and ran their diagnostics program which advised that disc had bad sectors and may be repairable using their software, but strong warnings about possible loss ot data, including the OS, tell me not to try that until another HD is up and running.

The new HD, a Maxtor 6E040LO, should be here tomorrow from Newegg (nice folks to do business with BTW). It's an OEM unit, i.e arriving naked, no cables or software. I've downloaded Maxtor's software (mxblst4win.EXE) and have it on my desktop. It apparently contains the drivers and will let me create partitions. All Greek to me.

I've been inside the case. There is a shelf for a second HD on top of the original. There is an empty data connector at the mid-point of the ribbon cable to the existing HD. There is an empty power connector sitting there, obviously intended for a second HD. There is a jumper on the original HD which must be currently set as "master" altho I can't see that without first removing the HD.

I've noodled around in BIOS and found the section for "Boot Order". It only shows three things, the CD unit, Drive A, and Drive C. It does not show my D: partition, perhaps because that is not a bootable drive.

My data (music, documents, photos, etc.) are all backed up to CD's. I have the Compaq two-disk System Restore CD's which functioned O.K. six months ago. I have a version of Norton Ghost, but it's instructions/FAQ's, although seemingly in English, appear understandable only by Jedi Knights (or most of you folks). I have a link to a 15 day free trial of something called R-Drive Imaging which seems to be another type of "ghosting" software. Even thought I've backed up data, it's still a huge pain in the rear to reinstall all the goodies, AVG, firewall, and dozens of other things. It would be so cool to just "transfer" everything from existing C: to what will become the new C: then take the old HD to the crusher. I don't need 2 HD's, don't ever want to be messing around in BIOS or registries unless it's an emergency. Can we do that??? Oh, and I also want a pony...yes, a pony.

So now it's almost show time. I assume that when the new drive arrives, I need to jumper it as "slave", and mechanically install it. But then what? Kind of assuming when I turn compter back on, Windows will "see" some new hardware and ask me if I want it to find drivers, in which case I'll say "no" and direct it to the Maxtor .exe file, but at that point, I'll be sooooooo lost in the woods. Help me with the next few steps.

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Close, but no cigar.

Mxblst4win.EXE creates a bootable floppy, so you need to prepare that. After installing the new drive, boot the computer with the floppy and run the installation program. See the below info about the flash movie. It talks about MaxBlast 3 but 4 will be very similar.

Some good info from Maxtor:

Jumper Settings. Yours is a style B, so as a Slave no Jumper is present.

Instructions for Installing MaxBlast 4 Into Windows. Watch the MaxBlast 4 Installation Flash Movie. In that tutorial select Setup Your Hard Disk>Primary Slave (next)>Windows 98/98 OSR2 (next)>Install Drive as New Boot Drive (next)>Easy Installation (next)> and your C: partition will be ghosted to your new drive. You can then swap drives (changing the jumpers appropriately) and be able to boot from the new drive.

That is a very easy process and I did not realize that MaxBlast does that. If something goes wrong in that process its no big deal. You can still format the slave, set up partitions (if you want to) and Ghost or install the OS from your restore CD's in another manner.

Hey, you said I could relax until Friday! You tryin' tu throw me off the scent?

True to form I went to the Maxtor site to look up the specs of your new drive and was directed to an empty page with "there has been an error" at the top.

What to do next:

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Dammit, never heard of this stuff! Got a url where I can read up?

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Probably true but not necessarily. It may be using the 'Cable Select' identification system. Does the ribbon cable going between your drive and motherboard have different coloured connectors or all the same colour?

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If the original drive is set to 'master', yes.

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No and no. You need to go into the BIOS when you turn on the machine and look for the section that lists your IDE devices (usually the first page listed in the menu). There you should see a list of four items marked 'Primary Master', 'Primary Slave', 'Secondary Master' and 'Secondary Slave'. Beside those names should be an identifying code for your drives and CDROM etc. If you see your Maxtor listed as Primary Slave then all is well and you can exit the BIOS and continue the boot to Windows. (If Primary Slave is set to "NONE" you need to change it to "AUTO", exit BIOS saving the settings and reboot to check again.
After reboot Windows will not "see" anything different because there are no Partitions or logical drives defined on your new drive. That's where the Maxtor software may come into play. However if you are going to use R-Drive without extra partitioning you don't need to do anything else at this stage.

Complication - your D: drive with the Compaq backups. You will have to clone that as well, and in such a position as it stays the D: drive. Not sure about size limitations though.

I suggest you download R-Drive to your system as soon as your ready to go (even if your not going to use it - just in case) and find out the Master, Slave and Cable Select jumper settiings for both hard drives.

Did I say this operation was simple? Simple to do but not to type out!

Resistance is futile!

UPDATE - I type too slow, Leurgy posted while I was thumbing the keys.
From what he said the Maxtor software will do everything for you (almost). Don't forget that D: drive! Good Luck.

This post has been edited by Rimmer: 24 May 2005 - 09:13 PM

Hey Rimmer

Check out the flash movie link in my last post. It links to the executable too. That MaxBlast will do the Ghost. Pretty cool little program.

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Assume that means a quick trip into BIOS to tell it to first boot from the floppy?

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and

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Is it going to be just as easy to "ghost" D: over to the new drive using the MaxBlast software? On the other hand, why in the heck do I need that stuff that Compaq puts on D:, I haven't needed it for six years and I have the restore disks locked in a vault. Life should be simple. Let's chew on that for a bit.

And what about the pony? Is this the best that Grinler has to offer?

OK, I'm gonna watch the flash movie (G rated I hope) and make the floppy. No hurry responding to above questions as the HD isn't quite here. Thanks.

Congratulations on your new hard disk ...like it is a new baby or something
Great advise from Rimmer and Leurgy.
You mentioned you had a version of Ghost, what version do you have?
I have never used the software that Rimmer mentioned, so I can't advise you on that.

Older versions of Ghost require you to boot up with a boot disk and select a variety of ghosting options. - A complete Disk Copy, a Partition copy etc. The newer versions of Ghost have a lot more options including, copying to USB and Firewire portable drives, CD/DVD writers, along with the other basic cloning options of copying an entire disk, or an individual partition.

Let's simplify the process a little...this is what you need to do:(simplified I hope and not to be used as a complete guide)
1. Install your new hard disk, with all the details of hooking up the data cable, power cable, and the jumper setting.
2. Go into your BIOS and set up your computer to see the new drive.
Probably Primary -Slave.
3. Boot you computer.
4. Install the imaging software.
5. Image your Master disk to the slave disk.(be careful you don't mix up the drives..I screwed this up once)
6. Remove the master drive -hey, it's going to die anyways. Or, you could make it the new slave. (that would add another step)
7. Change the Slave over to the Master. -All Cable/jumpers/ and BIOS settings.
Remove the OLD Master.
8. Reboot you computer and you have everything you had before you started this adventure.

Just make sure you check and re-check you settings when you are doing the step #1
Good-luck and keep us posted.


Joshuacat

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Shouldn't need to, most systems are (were) set to boot from the floppy first - if there is no floppy present it moves on to the hard drive.

Just a point about that D: drive, if you are used to having your CD drive as E: and you have installed games or other software which need the CD in the drive to run, then you should clone the D: drive (partition) also, as that will preserve drive letters. i.e. your CD drive will be kept as E:.

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Very smooth. It even fixes the problem that Joshuacat referred to where you put in your blank hard drive and clone it onto your system. OOPS!

Why do I feel like a dinosaur all of a sudden?

This post has been edited by Rimmer: 24 May 2005 - 11:29 PM

Nice video. Looks like you are set to go. I also did a search for more info on the Disk to Disk copy. I found the following step by step procedure to copy your old drive to the new drive with the utility mentioned in the video. See these steps

Step # 1 of the Disk to Disk copy:

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May fail...might not either...

The last thread that we went through was a result of your inability to run scandisk or defrag.

I would recommend you try the disk to disk copy from Maxtor, if you get errors, move on to another imaging software. By the way, Ghost will also fail the copy if there are too many errors on your drive. Although, I just ghosted a computer with the message at boot up that the drive was going to fail with the f1 to continue... and it worked fine.

I guess you will just have to try it one step at a time.

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Good question. To do that you will need to use the Advanced Installation as opposed to the Easy one, setting the partition sizes in the process. That will leave a third partition on the new drive as it is a lot bigger. Or, when you clone the drive, your current D: will take all the space beyond the size of the current C: which seems a waste.

I'm wondering if, when you run the Restore CD's, is any information pulled from your current D: as part of the process? Only Compaq would know that for sure. However, with a cloned drive, the restore CD's almost seem redundant. If you leave your current C: alone, you can use that as your backup OS, so you shouldn't need to restore. With your current drive installed as a slave and running the OS off the new drive, the current drive could last forever, as it will see little use. Besides, whatever is causing the error that halts Scandisk and Defrag hardly seems fatal as its running fine now. Try to avoid adding or deleting any info or programs on the current drive as that will bring you closer to the point where a Scandisk or a Defrag becomes an issue.

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We must have both been posting around the same time in our first posts here. I had prepared almost exactly the same response as you did and then I checked out the video, and deleted everything I wrote. I had no idea MaxBlast would do that. Makes it too easy.

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I don't see that as a problem as you mentioned you had previously run Scandisk and Defrag weekly.

twinsdad, never mind the pony, you gotta pony up for that new drive.

Here's some more information regarding your d:\ drive and what it contains.
Link provided by HP/Compaq. See 2nd paragraph and below:

D:\ drive contents

Joshuacat

Great link Joshuacat

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That answers my question about what, if any, info is pulled from the D: partition when doing a restore.

The way my dinosaur brain sees it we need to have a D: partition on that new hard drive so that the full capability of the Compaq restore process is available.

The current setup is - C: Windows & Data 13GB; D: Recovery 4GB; E: CDROM

Option 1 - C: Windows & Data 13GB; D: Recovery 27GB; E: CDROM

Option 2 - C: Windows & Data 36GB; D: Recovery 4GB; E: CDROM

Option 3 - C: Windows 6GB; D: Recovery 4GB; E: Data 30GB; F: CDROM

These sizes are not firm and obviously some compromise between the options is possible but I think they roughly represent the choices available. Option 1 wastes a great deal of space on the recovery data and I don't think its desirable. Option 3 has its merits and may have some advantages in a recovery situation but in day to day usage might be inconvenient. My vote goes for Option 2 or something similar.

You will be assimilated!

This post has been edited by Rimmer: 25 May 2005 - 09:35 AM

Joshuacat: Thanks for that link, now we know why Compaq put D: there and even tho I've not needed it for six years, I may need it tomorrow. And it's only a few GB's anyway.

Rimmer: I too like option #2. 36 Gigs on C:, 4 on D:, essentially the same as I have now with more room on C: for the Archies (whom I've never heard, BTW). Put the old drive in the crusher as soon as the new one proves itself, I'm good to go for six more years.

Now that we're focused on that goal, what is the path to get there using the Maxtor software. Set the new drive as slave and use the "advanced" mode....not a lot of info about that...will it ask me how much space to give C: and if I tell it 36GB, will it automaticaly put the remainder on D: ? Hope someone can walk me through that. And then there will be how to reset everything to make the new one the master.

And BTW, no new drive yet, so put this way down on the priority list. Thanks.

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Run the program you saved to the desktop with a blank, formatted floppy in the drive. Then boot with this floppy to run MaxBlast 4.

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Yup.

The video looks pretty clear. When you click Advanced and then next, click Add and in the box that pops up you click the slider and, for the purposes of the video it picks a 15GB partition. In your case you would move the slider to 36GB and click ok. In the video, you click Add again and for the purposes of the video it picks a 5GB partition and you click ok. In your case you would set the slider to the extreme right and click ok. At this point if you want to make a change you would click Modify. Click next and review your choices. Make sure both partitions are FAT32 and the sizes match what you want. Click next and the partitioning and copying are done and next to read and/or print the instructions to install the drive as a master and then click Done and Close the program.

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Remove both drives, and set the jumper on the new drive to master. Hook it up to the end of the cable, add power, screw it in, and boot. You might need to pause in the bios to be sure that the new drive's size is recognized.

Your cables have a faint red line running down the pin 1 side. This line must face the center of the drive. The molex (power) connector has a red wire on one side. This wire must also face the center of the drive. So when the cable and power connector are installed the reds are together, or side by each, as they say in Quebec.

This post has been edited by Leurgy: 25 May 2005 - 04:46 PM

I have worked with Win98SE on numerous systems, and am happy with it on my own PC.

The first thing I would do is figure out how to install the Compaq utilities currently on the 'recovery and utilities partition' on one or more CDs. That D: partition is a magnet for virus infection.

Next, I would decide if I want to copy the old partition from the old drive over, or install a new OS. I have successfully copied Win98SE with no ghost utilities, you just do it in specific manners for success.

From a Win98SE floppy, I would partition the 40GB (37GB actual) drive to a 32GB and a 5GB partition. The 32GB partition is your bootable, the 5GB is your extended. Then I would SYS the bootable partition to put the Win98SE DOS kernel on it.

I then set the new drive up as the second drive, the old as first, and boot to the old OS. I first copy over the root directory of the old drive, minus any temp files, *.CHK files, *.BAK files, or the WIN386.SWP file. Next, I copy over the Windows directory, then the Program Files directory, and finally all other directores except the Recycle Bin/Recycler. Normally I would clean out any junk files before transfer, so the WIN386.SWP and Recycle Bin are the only things I don't copy.

Next I swap the drives. The new 37GB drive is installed as bootable primary, the old one is mounted upside down in the second mounting bay as slave. The first bootup to the new drive is to test its performance before certifying it.

When the new drive is running smoothly, first decide whether you wish to keep the old one or not. It should run indefinitely in a position different from the one it was showing failures in, as the damaged bearing surfaces are no longer as strongly loaded.

Once you have that determined, you can either keep the Compaq utilities on CD or put them in the second partition of the primary drive, along with the swap page. The old drive can be used for data and either set as a 16GB and 3GB combo or a single 19GB partition as desired. I'd keep it as a second drive (and use the WD Data Lifeguard or MaxBlast utilities on it as needed) simply because as long as it works, added drivespace is always good. If you keep the old drive, you don't have to worry about any old data on it getting loose and compromising your ID...