Hard Drive is Dead... re-installing question.

ontrider · Ladies Man Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 16491 City: Russia

My hard drive is totally messed up, I'm lucky I even got it to boot up and recover my files to my secondary internal drive... so anyway, I was going to go and just buy a new IDE drive and just swap it internally with the one that's messed up.

This is my main drive though, so what do I need on the new one to get windows up and running (Win98se). I haven't done this in so long, do I need a boot disk or something? Basically I just want to buy a new drive, install it, load windows on it and then move all my stuff back over to the main drive (which will be the new one). Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

RD · Addict Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 626 City: Discovery Bay

With IDE dual drives one has to be set as the master and one as the slave. Kinda like being married! There's a jumper on the drive that configures this. They usually sell them set up for stand alone use (which I believe is no jumper). You'll need to check the one you've got and see how it's set. Even though you call it your secondary drive it could be set either way.

ontrider · Ladies Man Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 16491 City: Russia

Didn't even think of that. The one that died is the master for sure though - I thought it would just keep those settings in the BIOS though, no?

Jim M · Wakeboarder.com Freak Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Posts: 2933

No the Bios will control the IDE channels, but you have to use the jumpers to specify the primary device. I wouldnt recommend Cable Select, too many issues. I wouldnt waste time installing Win98 again. Burn XP off a friend if you dont have it and slap that on the new hard drive. As far as the other drive, yeah just hook it up and use it to pull over data/personal files..

ontrider · Ladies Man Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 16491 City: Russia

Thanks Jim. I got it setup pretty easily, but I've got other hardware problems now. Rolling Eyes

Hard drive is running smoothly though.