How To Install Slave Hard Drive?

hi all. ive tried to search but not had much luck so thought id put a post up for some help. Basically i have just brought a second hard drive and want to intall it as a slave for just extra storage. Ive red that things need to be done to the hard drive when its connected to the machine and isn't just a case of connecting it up and it working. ive done the jumper setting on the hard drive itself to slave and connected it to the machne but from here i am pritty much lost. i was just woundering if someone could help me out with what i need to do.

Thanx in advance
Dan

Next you need to enter your bios (normally hit "delete" when computer starts/posts), once in your bios look for BOOT , then for hard disk drives, find your new hard drive and set it as "slave", then save and exit.

If you can't find this info, it might be because your bios will set it up for you.

Edited by chiefmasterjedi, 07 November 2005 - 11:42 AM.

thanx for the very quick reply. is this that needs to be done? just going to bios? no formatting or particining? its a brand new hard drive so id guess it wouldnt needed to be done
sorry for more questions

I've never formatted a new drive before but thats not to say you shouldn't, check the manual that came with the hard drive. As for partitioning, it is really up to the individual and your needs. Some people like to partition 4gigs of the drive and install the operating system on it and then use the rest of the partition for storage. But seeing you are adding this drive to an existing setup (if i understand you right) i would personally just use the drive for storage and set your master drive (the one with the OS installed) as the boot drive (the master should already be your primary boot device, so no need to change anything).

yeah thats correct just using this new one for storage, think when i went into the bios i didnt select it right as when the machine restarted it come up saying insert a boot disc so i think it didnt read it off the master.
there was no book with the hard drive so cant really check. but ill have to keep playing. only 1 thing im not sure is the new hard drive has a slave setting on the jumper and also a dont spin up slave setting too.

ok, here it is from start to finish. Set you new drive to slave (on the back of the hard drive) set your old drive to master (back of hard drive), connect them both to the mobo and power, and switch on. Enter bios, find BOOT, look in there for the right menu to change master/slave config for your drives. Set new HDD (hard disk drive) to slave and the old one to master. Now find boot priority and set 1st = removable (floppy) 2nd = master HDD and 3rd = Cd-rom. Save and exit, all should work fine now.

I have to go out now for an hour or so, but i will check back here to see your progress!

Regards,
Chief.

cheers for all the help. the machine has booted up now and i believe the new hard drive has been done as the slave now. i did everything u said except left the slave as auto detect as it was only seeing it as 40gb which is half it should be. i dont think xp has detected it though as theres no icon in 'my computer', only the master and not a slave one.

Ok, atleast it's running now. Something i should've asked first was, what kind of HDD is it (ata or sata) and what sort is the master, make models etc:?.
Going by what you have said so far, i was thinking they are both ATAs connected to the IDE channels. If they are both sata, then master/slave doesn't matter as they are controlled through the sata controller.

Anyway, let me know and we'll try and sort it out.

Chief.

yeah they are both ATAs connected through IDE channel. just gone to devise manager and The master is a fujitsu mpa3052atu and the new slave is is a HDS728080PLAT20 dunno if that makes any sence really lol
This computer is old really, a PII 300mhz so it might be that the modo doesnt accept dual hard drives. its there in the device manger but theres no icon on 'my computer' which is find strange

i'm sure there's a way to assign a letter to a hard drive (C, D, E etc.) but i can't remember how. Maybe someone else will view this and solve it, but everything seems to be installed ok.

ok mate cheers for the help so far.

I can't give you a full explanation now but:

This computer is old really, a PII 300mhz so it might be that the modo doesnt accept dual hard drives.

The mobo will accept up to 4 IDE devices but the BIOS may not be able to see anything larger than 40GB hence your drive comes up the wrong size. This can be fixed.

What operating system are you running? If it's Win9x then you should be looking at Fdisk and Format.
If you don't format the drive you won't see anything in 'My Computer'.

I'll try and post more later if you havn't already been helped by others.

Your second drive is a Hitachi Deskstar 80GB, specs sheet here.

There are two different ways of setting up the two hard drives on an IDE channel sharing the same cable:

The original way used a 40 pin cable and the drives were jumpered as Master (MA) and Slave (SL). It does not matter which connector you use.
Faster IDE interfaces use an 80 pin cable and the drives can be jumpered either as MA and SL or both as Cable Select (CS). On this type of cable the Master drive must plug into the (black) end connector and the Slave drive plugs into the middle connector (grey).

You need to identify your IDE cable as 40 wire or 80 wire (Normally the 80 wire has different coloured connectors). If you have a 40 wire connector you must use the Master/Slave settings. If you have an 80 wire cable you can use either Cable Select settings on both drives, or the Master/Slave settings.

The first partition on your Master drive becomes the C: drive.

Once the drive is connected correctly you must set the BIOS to detect it. Exact commands depend on what BIOS version you have - the easiest way is to set Primary Slave, Secondary Master and Secondary Slave to AUTO (Primary Master will already be set correctly because that's what your system boots off now.)

Older BIOS may not have an AUTO setting, there may be a seperate section for 'automatically detect Hard drive'. Even older BIOS won't have that but I don't think that's your situation.

Once the drive is correctly identified in the BIOS you can reboot and define a partition on the new drive using FDISK. I think you can do this from an MSDOS prompt but my own experience has always been working from a boot Floppy. Partitioning is where you decide into how many parts you want to split your hard drive (probably 1) and what file system it should use FAT16, FAT32, NTFS etc (for Win9x system choose FAT32).
DO NOT run FDISK options until you are satisfied you are working with the correct drive. (If you FDISK your system drive its bye bye system.) Choose the option to view the current partition information and make sure it's not the drive with Windows on it before you make changes.

After the drive is partitioned then you need to reboot again and at this point the drive will have a logical drive letter (probably "D:")

At an MSDOS prompt you then type FORMAT D: (for a data drive)
When the format has finished close the MSDOS window and D: should be available for use under 'My Computer'.

The definitive reference would be here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;EN-US;255867

hth

Edited by Rimmer, 08 November 2005 - 02:38 AM.

The computer is running XP

The computer is at my girlfriends right now and im away working, but from memory i have set the primary hard drive as the master using the jumpers and also in the BIOS hard drive with the operating system on it (which boots into XP fine) and the new one as auto detect. when the computer boots up it detects this hard drive fine, but when i have gone into 'my computer' all its showing there is the master hard drive with no sign of the new one. it still has the cd rom as d drive. i have checked in device manger under hard drives and its showing the hitachi one, but only says its 33gb. (didnt see your earlier post)
is partitioning needed as all this slave hard drive would be used for is for data?
how would i use/make a floppy to Fdisk this new hard drive

Thanx for the help so far

OK, you dont need floppies or command prompts under XP (or Win2000). (I missed the instant when you mentioned it was XP.)

Assuming the drive is connected correctly what you do in XP is partition and format using the Administrative tool in Control Panel. Under 'Computer Management' see 'Disk Management'.

The Microsoft simplified guide says

To set up your new drive once Windows loads, click on Start, Help and Support, and type in ‘disk management’. Under Suggested Topics, click on Disk Management under Overviews, Articles and Tutorials and then click ‘Checklist: Adding a new disk’ and follow its instructions.

but here is an illustrated guide which shows you what to do:
Partition a second Hard Drive in XP

When that's partitioned you right click on it and select Format.

The newly formatted drive will probably become your D: drive and bump your CD drive to E: but if this is a problem (e.g. if you have games which install from D: and want the CD in the drive to play) then you can allocate drive letters yourself by right clicking on the partition and selecting 'Change drive letter and path...'.

If the drive size is not correct I would check the mobo manufacturers website for a BIOS upgrade (read all instructions very carefully) to fix the problem. If there is none available then it may be possible to use disk management software. See the Leurgy's compendium of Hard Drive diagnostics:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/28744/hard-drive-installation-and-diagnostic-tools/

Also double check the hard drive jumpers because some drives have a setting limiting the capacity to 32MB to accomodate older systems. (Edit: Oops, I mean 32GB of course.)


hth

Edited by Rimmer, 09 November 2005 - 05:46 PM.