I am attempting to reformat a computer that has two drives -- the original 4 gb that came with the computer and another 15 gb drive that was installed later. I want to make the 15 gb drive my master and the 4 gb drive the slave but I can't figure out the order and way I need to go about reformating so that I can install my OS on the 15 gb. Win98 is currently on the 4gb drive. If I clean off the 15 gb using fdisk, can I then direct an fdisk on the 4gb? Would I then make the physical switch on the pins for each drive so the master becomes the slave and vice versa and then be able to install Win98 on the larger drive? What would I have to do to the smaller drive? Does it have to have a Fat32 partition or something? This is new territory for me. Thanks in advance for your help.
Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Reformating Two Drives at same time
- Thread starter baracuda
- Start date
Use fdisk from the boot floppy to delete the partitions on both drives, one at a time. In the fdisk menu is choice #5, Change drives, when 2 or more hard drives are present.
After doing that, change the jumpers on the drives so the smaller is Slave. If your data ribbon is a Cable Select, both drives will have the jumper on CS, just change the cable plugs as the cable determines Master and Slave. Actually you can also do this before running fdisk, just be sure the BIOS sees them correctly.
Both drives have to be FAT32 as FAT16 has a drive/partition limit of 2047MB/2GB. Do choose Yes when fdisk asks if you want to use Large Disk support on drives over 512MB.
After doing that, change the jumpers on the drives so the smaller is Slave. If your data ribbon is a Cable Select, both drives will have the jumper on CS, just change the cable plugs as the cable determines Master and Slave. Actually you can also do this before running fdisk, just be sure the BIOS sees them correctly.
Both drives have to be FAT32 as FAT16 has a drive/partition limit of 2047MB/2GB. Do choose Yes when fdisk asks if you want to use Large Disk support on drives over 512MB.
- Thread starter
- #3
check url below for cable select.
I assume that you don't have cable select.
Try to do this one step at a time.
1. backup any important data
2. remove both hdd
3. install the 15G as master
4. install your OS
5. add the 4G as slave
Keep in mind that if you make two partitions on the 15G, ie C and D, and you hook up your 4G, this will be your D drive not E!
I assume that you don't have cable select.
Try to do this one step at a time.
1. backup any important data
2. remove both hdd
3. install the 15G as master
4. install your OS
5. add the 4G as slave
Keep in mind that if you make two partitions on the 15G, ie C and D, and you hook up your 4G, this will be your D drive not E!
The Cable Select data ribbon cable will be marked as to which end goes to the motherboard, which end is Master, and the middle is always Slave. The hard drive jumpers have to be on CS/Cable Select if using that type data cable and simply changing the data cable to opposite drives changes what they are. That was one of the features when those cables came into use, didn't have to dig into the mess of wires to change the jumpers.
- Thread starter
- #6
Baracuda,
Set the jumper on the 15 gig to master and the 4 gig jumper to slave. You can use a drive utility to copy the whole partition of the 4 gig to the 15 gig which will prep
the new 15 gig for you and take the contents of the 4gig and transfer it to the 15gig at the same time, If at least one of the drives is a Western Digital then you can use Data Lifeguard Tools to do this.
Set the jumper on the 15 gig to master and the 4 gig jumper to slave. You can use a drive utility to copy the whole partition of the 4 gig to the 15 gig which will prep
the new 15 gig for you and take the contents of the 4gig and transfer it to the 15gig at the same time, If at least one of the drives is a Western Digital then you can use Data Lifeguard Tools to do this.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
- Question
