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 Mike Lewis on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Using 2 HDDs.

Status
Not open for further replies.

santosh2natal

Programmer
Aug 10, 2003
37
IN
Hi buddies,
I have two hard disks in my PC with the motherboard Intel 865 Original. I want to use both hard disks for different OSs.
Currently I use Win2k. I made the second HDD disabled in the CMOS setup. But still it is showing the contents of 2nd HDD in the explorer. I have connected both the hard disks using Cable Select jumper setting. I had also tried as Primary & Secondry jumper settings, but this also results the same. How can i achieve the desired result? Please suggest.

Thanx n bye.

--Santosh
 
santosh2natal,

See:
thread779-1093318

rvnguy

"I know everything..I just can't remember it all
 
Hi there,

Firstly, try using one HDD for both OSS's...then use your second one for space. This works out logically better than using two hdd's for two different OSS's. When doing this set the second hdd to slave and not cable select. You see, OS's like being on Primary Partitions and because u can only have one, it's best practise loading OS's on one.....

 
Hello SanTosh...

The desired result is to use both hard disks for different OSs, right???

OK....

I have several questions for you....

Are these hard drives ATA or SATA??? Are they on the same cable connected to the same controller slot on motherboard?? If so did you try the 2nd slot if one exists???

What is the 2nd OS you want to use?

You mention that you can see the 2nd drive from the 1st when your workstation is running. Is the 2nd drive configured with the 2nd OS? Can you actually access it, or just see it?

Ron in San Francisco
 
Hi wiltonRon,
Thanks for your interest in solving my problem.
You have asked some questions which I would answer as:
My Both drives are ATA.
One is connected to the Primary Master slot, and the other is connected to the Secondary Master slot.
I want to use second OS as Unix or Linux.
The second hard disk have no OS and I can access the same from the 1st hard disk where main OS i.e. Windows is installed.

Hope you could solve the issue.

Thanks for reply and best regards,

-Santosh
 
Another solution would be to get an ide (ata) removable tray. You can install one os on one hard drive and another os on the other hard drive. Then just put in what tray you want depending on what os you want to use.
I use this system, less chance of dual-boot errors and loss of data.
You can install a hard drive on your secondary ide line and use that hard drive for data for both os's or partition that drive, one section for each os.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
santosh2natal - NT based o/s (NT/2k/xp/2k3) ignore the bios settings as far as second and subsequent disks are concerned (ie, they always see them) - but it shouldn't matter. You can still install linux or unix on the second drive.
 
Quite frankly I dont understand the problem. I use one drive for XP, another drive for Suse, one Sata drive for xplite, another sata drive for Redhead linux another for Mandrake and the last sata drive for win98 to run legacy programs. They are all bootable with a boot manager. Before the boot manager installation I selected the boot drive in Cmoss. So I really dont understand your problem at all.
Regards

Jurgen
 
jurgen36, i didnt quite understand the problem either.
But i wonder, where can i get redhead Linux, or is she your girlfriend, lol.
Just kidding around. I know you meant redhat.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
I have 2 different hard disks, both are ATA, one is 80 GB and other is 8 GB. I make the 2nd HDD (i.e. secondary master) disabled from CMOS for not accessing the same. Even though, it is showing me when I boot in windows. I want this since I want to boot in Linux or Unix from copletely different HDD i.e. by selecting the Secondary Master from CMOS setup and disabled the Primary Master.

But I don't get the desired output.
 
Actually, from the BIOS, can you get the system to boot from the drive that you want? Usually typing F8 during the POST ram test?

Windows uses its own drivers for the disks, so if the hard disk hasn't been really disabled by the BIOS, Windows will still find it.


 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top