help partitioning a hard drive

i just put in a seagate 160 gb hard drive into my computer. i uprgraded to windows XP pro. the OS is on the new hard drive and i'll probably stick the old one in there also, just to store school files on. i've been reading about partitioning and stuff like that. is this necessary? if so is it hard or can a noob like me do it? any suggestions?

i loaded windows XP last night, do i need to blow this away and start from fdisk or what?

No, you don't need to partition and it is easy to do. Partitioning is taking one physical drive and splitting it up so that the computer thinks there is more than one. You can do this when you are installing XP but there are partitioning agents that can partition without any data loss. If you use the XP setup or Fdisk you will have to format the hard drive and you will lose all your data.

My advice, don't bother; 160GB isn't that big of a drive. Besides, hard drives are so cheap these days you can afford to buy another physical drive.

Just make sure that you set the jumpers correctly on the back of the hard drives if you're going to be doing a master/slave setup. Sometimes hard drives will come set as "single" as in the only drive in the system. Or more likely, chances are that your old HD is still set to "Master" and your new one may be as well. You'll want to make sure that the new one (with XP) is set to Master, and your old one set to Slave if you're installing them on the same cable, which is probably the case. Don't forget to make sure that the BIOS detects the slave drive.

Just make sure that you set the jumpers correctly on the back of the hard drives if you're going to be doing a master/slave setup. Sometimes hard drives will come set as "single" as in the only drive in the system. Or more likely, chances are that your old HD is still set to "Master" and your new one may be as well. You'll want to make sure that the new one (with XP) is set to Master, and your old one set to Slave if you're installing them on the same cable, which is probably the case. Don't forget to make sure that the BIOS detects the slave drive.



its not the placement of the OS that determines the master/slave relationship. Is its position on the cable that determines it. Of course none of this aplie if teh drive is SATA.

i got it figured out, i'm not going to partition any drive. and it read both master and slave drives. thanx for the help

its not the placement of the OS that determines the master/slave relationship. Is its position on the cable that determines it. Of course none of this aplie if teh drive is SATA.

The position on the cable determines it only if you have the HD jumpered to "cable select" otherwise you can place them any way you want providing you have the master/slave relationship established correctly. I only suggested that he have the new one (with the OS) set to master, otherwise there may be boot issues depending on which drive is assigned active boot status.

Oh yeah, and Serial ATA just makes everything more awesome :iceslolan

The position on the cable determines it only if you have the HD jumpered to "cable select" otherwise you can place them any way you want providing you have the master/slave relationship established correctly. I only suggested that he have the new one (with the OS) set to master, otherwise there may be boot issues depending on which drive is assigned active boot status.

Oh yeah, and Serial ATA just makes everything more awesome :iceslolan



No no no my statement was not made to hear myself talk (or see myself read in this case), on any modern 80wire cable the master goes at the end and the slave in the middle.


http://www.mikeshardware.com/howtos/howto_connect_ide_hd.html
On the ATA66/100/133 standard 80-wire cable, the Master hard drive or your boot hard drive goes on the END of the cable. This is true whether or not you use the Master/Slave style or the Cable Select style.

for for some more official souces here is intel and seagate:

http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/vc820/sb/CS-013684.htm
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_cable_select.html
The 40-pin 80-conductor cable is orientation specific. The cable connectors are color-coded: blue for the host connector, black and gray for the primary and secondary disk drives. The blue connector should be installed into the Primary IDE connector.

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/images/ata_cable_select2.gif

Yes it might work the other way around but it can also cause problems. And when you deal with PCs you always do stuff the right way othewise....