question on formmatting slave drive.

Foxhound888

Solid State Member
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My question is, is it safe to unplug my main hdd while my comp. is off and plug in another one just to get my secondary one cleared? i want to use it as a slave so do i need to install xp on to it or not? After i get it cleared will stuff work fine if i have both of them pluged in at once when i turn my comp on again or will i really screw things up? I know this is probably a really newb question but i'm not good at hdd stuff...
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking... Why do you want to unplug you're main drive to get another one formatted?

Um, well yes, you can swap drives all you want. As long as you do no physical damage to them, they should retain whatever's on them without a problem.
 
The_Other_One said:
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking... Why do you want to unplug you're main drive to get another one formatted?

Um, well yes, you can swap drives all you want. As long as you do no physical damage to them, they should retain whatever's on them without a problem.
Sorry, i should have been clearer. What i was wondering main is does the drive that i'm trying to make my slave drive need to have windows xp installed on it also or not, because when i tried to boot the drives together and this screen came up and it said somthing about cannot boot or somthing there was also like a bunch of f's in the text "FFFFF-FFFF-FFFFFF" (for example). Im not sure if it was because i've never formatted my old drive before and maybe dell did something to stop me from using it on a different computer or somthing... any ideas or anything would be really helpfull.
Thanks for all the help so far.
 
I still don't fully understand, but how about this. Plug in both hdd's. Make the second one (the one you'll be formatting) your slave and make sure the main one is set as master. Now boot up accordingly. Once you have booted up into windows, right click My Computer, then go to Manage. Next, go to Disk Management and then right click the slave hdd and click Format. And there ya go, it'll be reformatting and all you gotta do is wait. Of course, you could actually set the secondary one as your master and then put the windows disc in your cd rom and then boot from the cd rom. Then run the windows xp setup and it should give you option to reformat but I'm not 100% sure since it isn't already installed so I think it would be safer and easier to just do it the first way.
 
winterfreshpwnz said:
I still don't fully understand, but how about this. Plug in both hdd's. Make the second one (the one you'll be formatting) your slave and make sure the main one is set as master. Now boot up accordingly. Once you have booted up into windows, right click My Computer, then go to Manage. Next, go to Disk Management and then right click the slave hdd and click Format. And there ya go, it'll be reformatting and all you gotta do is wait. Of course, you could actually set the secondary one as your master and then put the windows disc in your cd rom and then boot from the cd rom. Then run the windows xp setup and it should give you option to reformat but I'm not 100% sure since it isn't already installed so I think it would be safer and easier to just do it the first way.

Ok, i just got done reformatting my old drive and after that i looked into system management or somthing and it said it was partitioned as a master or somthing so i thought that was weird, turned off my comp. made sure both were pluged in and tried to boot it up only this time the same old screen came up, it wont boot into windows. through the jumpers my master (the one i'm useing right now) is set as third master, my dvd rom is set as primary slave, and my old hdd(the one i want as slave) is set as secondary slave; i dunno whats up it's really boggling my mind. I've tried all the jumpers on my current master and i can't get it to be primary master so i just left it at third master, i don't know if it really matters but just extra info. Anything else anyone wants to suggest would be very helpful.

Thanks for all the replys so far they've helped me understand a little bit each time.
 
Unplug the reformatted drive and try setting up the jumpers on the main drive to master and see if you can get it as primary. Then I would plug in the other drive and set it up as the slave.
 
Right on your PC you'll have IDE1 and IDE2.

IDE1 is usually used for your hard drives and can contain a Master, and Slaves

IDE2 is then usually used as cd roms and stuff, and these can also contain a Master and Slaves.

On the motherboard if you look, you will see these two seperate connections, and your hard drives will probably be wired up to IDE1.

Now, plug the drive with Windows on it as a Master of what will be IDE1 probably, the jumpers on the hard drive should also be set, and also on the IDE cable, it should be the first connection closest to the motherboard on the ribbon.
The one you have just formatted to use as your Slave drive should also be set accordingly on the back, and should be put on the connection above the one you just connected the Master to.

Hopefully now, it'll see the Master as the primary, and the slave as a primary drive, with the cd roms etc as secondary.

Plus as long as the Slave drive is formatted, ou shouldn't have to place windows on it since windows will boot on the master hard drive

Hope this helps
 
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