Further to my last thread about installing XP...I have a second drive that I want to activate so that I can copy/backup some files (mainly porn LMFAO) over to before I nuke my primary drive for XP install.

 

How do you add a second drive? I think the jumper is set to slave on the second drive, have used the cable from my primary disk to connect up the second one but when I do auto detect in the BIOS it sees bugger all about the second HDD.

 

HELP!!! :(

 

Primary at the moment is only 6GB and the seondary drive, which I think currently has Red Hat installed, is a Quantum Fireball at 40GB's.

 

Muchos TIA.

Timmy I would like to help but Im an IT project manager so someone who knows something about IT will be along in a mo.......

Cheers big fella, I'll pop over to Google and do a search as I'm sure it shouldn't be rocket science. ;)

 

Just that XP has threatened to nuke "My Documents" folder on the trash install and I have too much stuff that I need to keep hold of. Mind you I could probably copy the contents of the folder to another one but still not sure if the files will survive the install. Plus I wanna get this 40GB drive activated.

set the primary drive to master and the second one to slave with the jumpers, make sure the BIOS is set to automatic on both of them. Im presuming the XP is using NTFS, in which case redhat as default has NTFS support disabled in the kernel, theres a way of reactivating it but i dont know how. What I would suggest (assuming you have broadband) is to download a CD bootable version of linux called Knoppix. Boot this up from the CD and you will be able to see both your windows and linux partitions, and you will be able to move filed between them.

HTH

Cheers bud, can you run two drives off one IDE controller with one cable though?

 

What I was thinking of doing now is swapping the HDD's over and just blitzing the 40GB drive that Red Hat is on and then adding what is now my primary as the second drive after sorting the XP install.

yeah you can, just make sure the 2 drives arent both master or slave otherwise the PC wont boot.

Cheers bud, can you run two drives off one IDE controller with one cable though?

Yes. The cable should have 2 connectors on it

 

What I was thinking of doing now is swapping the HDD's over and just blitzing the 40GB drive that Red Hat is on and then adding what is now my primary as the second drive after sorting the XP install.

That's what I'd do. :dance:

I'd help too, but I've evolved from BOFH Support to Netwrok admin, you'll have to phone the helpdesk. :D

 

http://bofh.ntk.net/

Something is not right here! OK so I put my 40GB disk on as the only fookin' HDD connected up, booted from the CD and started the XP install...it formatted the drive as I had Solaris previously installed...but I keep getting the same thing!

 

Right when XP is copying its files from the CD to the HDD it keeps telling me that it can't copy certain files so I just hit ESC to bypass them, then it tells me 39 mins left to completion and keeps changing the Info. about how sodding great it is and what it does but doesn't seem to do f\/ck all else! So I abandon the install as I can load Solaris in about an hour, nevermind a whole day! :(

The main one is make sure is set to master and one is set to slave. If one is set to cable select and one set to slave it could still cause problems.

 

Also make sure you have the cable the right way round. Most of cables now you can only put in 1 way but there are still some which you can put on either way.

 

Why cant you put it on your secondary IDE?

Stu, I took out the over complicated issue of having both drives on at once as I just wanted to get XP installed on a single drive for now so that I can prove that it will actually install.

 

So forget about the two drives issue for now bud, but even doing the full nuke install as opposed to the upgrade it doesn't seem to be getting past the actual setup installation, it won't actually get to the Installing Windows section of the install.

 

Just how long should an XP install take by the way, this MO FO seems to take hours! It's saying that it can't copy lsasrv.dll, some .scr files and some .mtf files to the HDD.

P.S. if I was doing this as a contractor I would be raking in o/t by now! LMFAO :)

What screen have you got to? Have you got the windows setup screen when it starts to look like windows or still have the blue DOS type of screen?

 

Give the CD a good clean. Who did you get the CD off?

you got a different CD drive to try? The exact same thing happened to me once, I even tried another CD and it still didnt work, I didnt know what else to do so as a last resort i though ill try another cd drive and it worked straight off. You never know, give it a go..

And if it says it can't copy certain files, don't just press ESC to bypass them as they're almost certainly needed! :rolleyes:

 

If you have another installation of XP that you have access to, you could make a note of which files it can't load and copy those from another machine, either onto a CD or a floppy. I'd try another disk as a first step though.

 

If you have broadband, a machine that can ftp and a cd writer, I'm sure we can sort something out! :cool:

Do you have a CD writer? I find that CD writers are much better at reading writeable CDs than a normal CD player.

 

Just telling you for future reference, I am sure you are using a genuine copy of XP ;)

Timmy,to solve all your probs now and in the future with drives getting themselves confused.Do what I did,buy a LIAN LI case with hard drive bays that just slot in and connect themselves.Bit like putting in a VHS tape.Not only is it a Rolls Royce case I can change to what ever windows system I want by a turn of a key which releases the drive.Then slip another one in.Not to expensive either,got my case and spare bays from Maplins.....Hope this helps