Another dumb hard drive question.

[grahambell]

Have now fitted a new hard drive that not only works with my bios but still hasn't packed in after a week.

However, in view of all the hard drive trouble I've had so far this year I'm considering fitting an old 1 or 2gig HD as a slave unit purely to back up files onto.

So the question is, would it need Windows loading to the slave HD to be able to do this or would I be able to use it almost like a big floppy drive?

[sybaseian]

grahambell said:

Have now fitted a new hard drive that not only works with my bios but still hasn't packed in after a week. However, in view of all the hard drive trouble I've had so far this year I'm considering fitting an old 1 or 2gig HD as a slave unit purely to back up files onto. So the question is, would it need Windows loading to the slave HD to be able to do this or would I be able to use it almost like a big floppy drive?

It should just pick-up a drive letter - I've a 5Gb PCMCIA harddrive that I use for backing up to and swapping data between a couple of laptops.

Alternatively, you could buy an external USB harddrive rather than a 1 or 2Gb internal harddrive

[.Mark]

I had a secondary drive in one of my old machine, just formatted, windows gives it a drive letter automatically.
I then wrote a little batch file with a shortcut on the desktop that I ran whenever I saw it that backed up my imprtant files.

Crude. But worked.

[ErnestM]

Graham - which version of Windows?

Depending on which Windows - the mothods differ to get your OS to recognise the drive...

ErnestM

[ErnestM]

Ok Graham, I had a rummage for your OS from previous posts and it appears you are using Windows98SE...

You just need to load Windows to your C: (new) drive and then, after everything is working fine, drop to DOS (yes - I know you can do the following inside Windows, but I am giving MS approved advice here) and FDISK the spare drive and create a partition. After you reboot your system, the drive will be visible in "My Computer". Right click it and format it WITHOUT copying system files to it (you don't need it bootable). That should do it for you!

WARNING:Obviously I am assuming that if there is any data on the "spare" drive, you don't wish to keep it as FDISKing will delete it and even if it doesn't, formatting will. If there is already a valid Windows readable partition, after you install Windows on C, it will just recognize your slave as D upon Windows install completion...

I hope this helps...

ErnestM

[grahambell]

Thanks as always for all the info guys.

[pdV6]

Don't suppose your motherboard has a built-in RAID controller, by any chance? If so, drop in a 2nd drive the same as the 1st and set the RAID up to mirror the disks. If (when!) one fails, your data is safe on the 2nd until such time as you can replace the failed one and rebuild the mirror.

[robertuk]

Hi !
I normally partion my main drive into C: and D:

c is for the operating system(windows) and d is for data. You could also use another hard disk but if you use an old one as a slave this will slow the new (fast)main hard drive down.

Also its a good idea to set up any temp files to a seperate disk drive or partion. This means the disk drive always thrashing a place where your data isnt.
Useful if a program crashing and then you have to fix drive d (and your data is on say e which is ok).

This is especially true for temp internet files which are constantly written as you browse.
In IE, go to tools > internet options >settings

and move the folder to your temp drive.

Hope this helps !

Regards,

Ramesh