2 hard drives

i have two hard drives, and i was wondering what happens if i put them both in at once? does it prompt me on which hard drive i want to boot up? they both have OS by the way. or can i run one hard drive and access it on the my computers window?

and also, on both of my hard drives i have a c: drive and a d: drive, and im wondering if i can just combine them into just a c: drive with all the space.

 

one hard drive has to be set as slave. the one set as a slave will appear as storage drive, but still keeps the OS on it.

the c: and d: drives are partitions on the hard drive. you would have to remove the d: partition, so the c: drive has the space.

 

how do i set one up as a slave drive?? and how do i know which partition to delete??

 

i do have ide. would i also need to format both hard drives or no?

and if i some how get a virus or something and i end up needing to format it, would i only need to format the master drive? or if the virus came from the slave drive then i can just reformat the slave?

 

The later hp's also use CS instead of M & S as they're also SATA

 

no they are on different OS, one has XP home and another has XP pro. what if both drives have a c: and a d: drive?

 

Since you mention your's are IDE, it's simple to dual boot, what that means is, by adding a line to the boot.ini you will have an option to pick which OS you want to use,the added bonus of this is if you have a hdd failure you can make the good one a master & continue working or if you get a virus you have the other OS as a recovery & repair option,personally unless you have a cd or dvd of xp home & prof or some other form of recovery disks,i'd be loath to delete either one, i would invest in a large external hdd if all you want to do is store music,photo's,data etc ,there's nothing worse than having only 1 OS & then loosing it with no options of recovery,my setup is exactly what i've stated the difference is i have an image as backup for each hdd including all externals,i've lost data because of poor backup management so now i have two of everything


here's the extra line you need to dual boot MASTER & SLAVE,your's may look a little diff in the wording but essentially all you need change once the extra line is put in,is where it says RDISK( )for the 2nd line you insert the number 1 in the brackets,this denotes DISK 1 as all disks start at 0 so disk 2 becomes disk 1..lol..

PARTITION ( ) insert the number depending on which partition your OS is on,so if a disk contains 2 or more partitions & say you put the OS on the 3rd partition on the slave drive then naturally you would write it like this PARTITION(3) {i only use caps for easy illistration only} refer posted boot.ini for correct typing

OK regarding the quote marks "MICROSOFT XP PROF" you can make it anything you want in between the quote marks "XP ruLes mAn OSX sucks"

TIMEOUT = insert how many seconds before default OS boots
DEFAULT OS = the line directly below timeout is for which OS boots first,if you want the slave drive to boot then change rdisk(0) to rdisk(1),don't forget to change partition(1) to partition(3) or (2) depending where your OS is situated

Although it may not look like it here there are spaces between some of the letters & symbols,you'll see it on your boot.ini file

timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP PROF Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP HOME Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


IMPORTANT NOT: BEFORE ALTERING BOOT.INI MAKE A BACKUP OF THE ORIGINAL CONFIG ONTO FLOPPY,CD,DVD or what ever form you wish

 

thanks for your reply guys. i was also wondering, what does it mean when like on the back of the hard drive, dvd/cd drive also, when there are 6-8 pins and a 2-pin cover that says slave, master, and cable select. do those matter? what do i do with the cover that covers up two pins?

 

those pins are the functions of the hard drive, and the bridge that connects the two pins together is the jumper. those are the functions we're talking about. they are suppose to be open; no covers.

the hard drive that will be used for storage should be set to slave. and the one with the OS you want to use should be set to master.

 

i meant the jumper pins are always uncovered. should've been more clear on that one. do they even make a cover for all the pins?

 

It makes it easier, only if your fingers are the size of tweezers.

 

that's what i hate about the opentop jumpers; you need tweezers or a small, precision flathead screwdriver to take them out. but the opentops are useful if you don't need to switch the settings often.

 

Sounds like another nail biter like myself

 

thanks for the info on running two hard drives.

but i have another question about the drives. like i said before, i have 2 drives, one with the OS and one with everything else. but i would i like to combine them. and im trying to delete the partition with the OS and installing the OS onto a single drive. but doing that, it would erase all my information on that current drive right? what im trying to say is, is there a way to keep everything on one drive without loosing my information?