Hard drive query

It needs a disk with data on it or the machine will think it doesn't have anything to continue booting the PC.
 
Ahh, okay. However, what if my CD-ROM drive is not my boot up procedure? Doesn't it only go to the floppy, and then the HDDs? For example, you can't restart with a floppy in, because the computer will try to boot off of it. But you CAN leave a CD-ROM in, because it'll bypass it while restarting.
 
yeh, you will have to go into BIOS and change the sequence, so it checks the CD-Rom first.
 
Ahh, okay, thanks.

Well, I still have some questions, but I won't be doing this upgrade till probably around Christmas or so, and tomorrow I'm leaving for Florida. I won't be back till next Wednesday, so keep this thread warm for me! See ya!
 
For win98 insert the boot disk and when it's done getting to the command prompt just run setup with your 98 cd in the drive.

XP I believe is bootable from the cd, so if your bios is set up to boot from d: or whatever your cd/dvd drive is it should go into the installation automatically.
 
If you get the retail version of the drive, it should come with a disk with a formatting tool on it, among other programs for the drive. Failing that, you can use FDISK with 98 (the util should be on the 98 startup disk. 2k/XP just has the means to do it during the install.
 
Okay, so let me see if I got this straight, now is the time to correct anything I say.

I'm not going to keep either of the drives I have in my computer now. True, they'd be good for backup, but I plan on getting a DVD writer soon (hopefully), so that should eliminate the need of the other drives for backups. So, I'll just have the 80, and one partition. So, all I do is take out my existing drives, insert the 80GB, boot up to BIOS, set my CD-ROM drive to be first in boot up, insert the XP CD, reboot, partition and format through there, and then install XP. And, if that I don't reinstall XP, then partition and format through a partition or a included disk with the drive, and then install whatever OS I'm going to install.

Should I put in the 80 immediately after I take out the 6 and 4, or should I boot to BIOS in between?

Does all of that sound right?
 
Sounds good. You may want to go into BIOS just to do an autodetection of the hard drive to make sure it's fully recognized by the system. That way, you'll know if you'd need a BIOS update to get the full capacity. If your system is Pentium II class or lower, this is something you want to be aware of. That's the only thing I can see being an issue.

Western Digital tends to have some funky jumpers, but using a single drive, you should be able to just leave the hard drive jumpers as is.

Other than that...I think I'm done with my piece.
 
Alright, thanks. I think that covers everything then.

In the event that I do not install XP and instead reinstall 98, I should make a boot-up disk on my system now before I do all of this, right?

After I take out the 6 and 4, should I boot up to BIOS without any HDDs, and then shut down again and put in the 80, or should I swap the 6 and the 4 for the 80 all in one step?

I know I'm asking a ton of stuff here, but I've never done this before and I don't want to get into a situation where I have a computer that I can't turn on.
 
heres what I would do,

Have a Win98 Boot disk ready, if anything goes wrong, its very useful.

Use one of the hard drives to backup any important data I have, e.g. the 4GB, format the other hard drives.

I would install XP Pro(Win 98 no way, would I go back to it),
after formating the 80GB, go into bios, change it so it checks the cd-rom to startup.

Insert the XP CD, start the computer, from there it will XP Setup will start.

During the setup the computer will restart, as it does go into bios, change the order of boot device again to the drive the XP is being installed on and you should be done in no time...

hope it helps!
 
Yes it does, a nice little summary. Thank you. The only thing to note there would be that I would set my CD-ROM drive to boot up before formatting the 80GB, as I'd have to do that to use the XP CD to format, unless my HDD comes with a disk to do that.
 
Well, here's the other thing to consider: do you want to use FAT32 or NTFS to format the drive? Especially if you're just gonna have one big 80gig drive w/o partitioning, NTFS will be the better choice since it can handle the size much more efficiently than FAT32. Also, the tools that come with the drive for formatting typically require a 98 boot disk to swipe some files during formatting (so, yeah, make a boot disk).
By booting off the XP CD and formatting it (it will make you before you can install the OS anyway), you eliminate having to do it before hand.

BTW, this thread could be fairly useful. Making it a sticky :)
 
I guess it has been.

Yes, so using the XP CD is the way to go.

Hmm...let's see...case. My current case is fine (it's from summer of 2000), except for the fact that it does not have a hole in the front for USB ports. So I could get a new case just for that, or get one of those USB hubs that fit in a 3.5" bay. Worth it for the new case or not?
 
Unless you really want a new case that looks slicker, something like an Antec EZ USB should run you around 20 bucks or so. Much cheaper than a full blown case.
 
Musta missed this one. The Antec EZ USB is a 5 1/4 bay that can hold a 3 1/2" drive (if you want) and has 2 USB ports on one side that you can hook up to some USB 1.1 headers on your motherboard. It runs around $20.
 
Whatever you do, don't have Windows XP and Windows 98 on the same hard drive. Partitioned or not, it will mess things up. Window 98 wasn't designed to work with Windows XP. I had a partitioned 60GB hard drive, 30GB for Windows 98, and 30GB for Windows XP. After the first couple months, I started noticing more error messages, frequent crashes, errors when defraging...etc.. I took it to a certified computer tech. and he confirmed the problem was that Windows 98 and Windows XP aren't supposed to share a hard drive. ---no matter how many partitions it has. I got rid of Windows 98 from the Hard Drive, and just used Windows XP for both partitions. Things worked fine from then on... at least until my PC started overheating, but thats another story.


I never thought of having just the O/S on its own partition, sounds like a good idea. I hate having to reinstall everything. I've got over 60 burnt CD's with back-up files, and I've had to use them all at least 4 times in the past.

P.S. Thats some good advice; definately consider getting a CD Burner if you don't have one already.
 
If you really want to, you can have 2 seprate hard drives for XP and 98, shouldn't cause much/any problems!? never tried it though :)
 
yes it would boot from slave, but you would need to change your bios settings so that your primary boot drive is your slave drive (6gb).. then it should work..

i believe i did this in win98.

i had a 25gb hhd partitioned it into:
a 10gb leaving me with: C:\15gb primary and D:\10gb (partition)

i then proceeded to format both partitions of all data.. and loaded windows onto the 10gb partition (D) drive...

this was fine.. but i noticed a signnificant performance decrease.. and eventually i started to have alot of problems with my os doing weird things. win98/se is not a good OS to do this on. XP can handle booting from a secondary device all the time alot better than win98/se. hope this helps.
 
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