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Adding an extra hard drive
Jeffrey - Mar 1, 2004
  Jeffrey Mar 1, 2004
I just pulled an old HD out of a trashed computer and for fun added it to my computer. I pulled the jumpers to make it a slave. XP recognizes it, and I reformatted it.

Is there any reason why this new drive might slow down my boot? Or is it my imagination?

Also, I've seen people chain HDs. How does one choose between HDs to boot from? That is, if I wanted to boot alternatively from the other drive with a different OS, how would I do that?

 kahuna Mar 1, 2004
I don't know about the slowing down thing, but it's easy to make your machine boot another OS off the 2nd drive. Just use a boot loader like grub (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub...) or gag (http://gag.sourceforge.net...). FWIW, you can even orce XP's bootloader to boot another OS, although it can be a pain at times.

 it290 Mar 1, 2004
A bootloader is indeed the best way, although you can also set it up on a different IDE channel and set the first boot device in the BIOS if you prefer.

 ExCyber Mar 1, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Is there any reason why this new drive might slow down my boot? Or is it my imagination?


It probably wouldn't (noticeably), but it's possible that it would. It could even speed it up. It really depends on the design of the ATA interface and BIOS code on your system.


  
	
	

		
		

			Also, I've seen people chain HDs. How does one choose between HDs to boot from? That is, if I wanted to boot alternatively from the other drive with a different OS, how would I do that?


This is managed by a program called a bootloader that sits in the first sector of the hard drive. Pretty much every OS has a standard or semi-standard bootloader, but for e.g. DOS/Windows it's just a simple one that boots from the drive you installed the OS to. My favorite bootloader is GNU GRUB..., but there are some others (including a commercial one by the company that does Partition Magic, I think it's called Boot Magic and should come free with Partition Magic).

 Jeffrey Mar 1, 2004
I just had a silly idea. Tell me if this would work.

I want to install windows 3.1 on a seperate drive (with DOS of course)... Could I just put an autoexec.bat file on a 3.5 disk, put it in the drive at boot and have the batch file point to the alternate drive?

 ExCyber Mar 1, 2004
Probably not. IIRC there are several bits and pieces of DOS/Win3.1 that are hardcoded to use the first HD reported by the BIOS.

 it290 Mar 1, 2004
Yup, in fact even 95 and 98 want to be on the first partition.

Of course, with 3.1 you could probably just make a boot floppy, have it boot up, cd to your windows directory and start windows from there. That's a bit cumbersome though.

 Jeffrey Mar 1, 2004
ahhh... fuggit.

It was a silly idea. I must have been feeling nostalgic. I tried to load DOS 5.0 from some 3.5 disks to the second HD, and it refused to load to anything but C drive.

The second HD is only 1.8Gig. THere is not a whole lot I can do with that. I've just decided to save my MP3s there. Note: I need almost 5 times that (maybe an Ipod mini). Maybe I'll use it as my download drive.

Is there any thing else I can do with it?

 Alexvrb Mar 2, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by jeff-20@Mar 2, 2004 @ 05:56 AM



 Is there any thing else I can do with it?


Get rid of it, and don't rely on it for storing any data. I had all my music stored on an old, secondary drive once. It died, with the click click clicky. Bye bye music. Seemed like such a good idea at the time, oh well I got broadband after that anyway.

 Jeffrey Mar 2, 2004
Should I chuck it at someone?

 emazur Mar 3, 2004
If you ever need to recover accidentally deleted files, it's supposed to be much better to have a second HD to recover the files to (apparently, the file being recovered may be written over the file you're trying to recover if you do otherwise).

 ExCyber Mar 3, 2004
Yes, ideally your operating system shouldn't be running from the original drive at all, to ensure that no new files, swap space, etc. overwrites the data.

 Alexvrb Mar 3, 2004

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by jeff-20@Mar 3, 2004 @ 01:41 AM



 Should I chuck it at someone?


Yes, but make sure you do it from a car or moped. Drive-by hard disking, anyone? Watch out! Geek gang violence!!!111oneoenone

As for recovering "accidentally deleted files" (this is why you don't bypass recycle bin as a habit!), couldn't you use a linux utility and run Knoppix off a CD-ROM? Then couldn't you burn it? Just a thought. If you delete something that is both 1) important and 2) massive, you're probably screwed anyway.