changing hdd's from slave to primary

Cagbagger · Post by **Cagbagger** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 6:59 pm

hi, didn't know where else to put this post so here goes...

I currently have 2 hdd's

about a month ago, i installed a new motherboard and did a repair on hdd because i have win2k. apparently i did the repair incorrectly because my keyboard and mouse wouldn't work no matter what i did. so i installed win2k on my second hdd which is the slave, whereas the one that i screwed up was the primary. I transferred all of the stuff from my primary to my slave and am currently running win2k on my slave. When I configured my BIOS, i selected my slave drive to boot first then fdd, cd, etc. It came up with an NTLDR error and told me i had to restart the system. So, i changed the bios to have the primary drive boot first. So it prompts me with a selection of windows configurations i want to run, since i have multiple installations. I choose the one that works on my slave drive and it's all good.

Now, my question is can i switch the primary and slave drives without causing troubles or complications? I know i need to set the pins accordingly, but will there be any complications such as not being able to boot? I want to make my current slave drive (the one i'm running win2k on now) my primary drive. Any help will be greatly appreciated.. thanks

Wilco · Post by **Wilco** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 7:04 pm

to make your hdd a primary you gotta change the pins... depending on ure hdd manufactor u will b able to see what makes the primary on the back of the hard drive usualy its the 1st two pins and 2nd to last 1 goin horizontal....looks on ure hdd it shud tell you how to make it Hdd if all else fails goto ure local pc shop and they will doit for u make sure u get rid of any porn

Cagbagger · Post by **Cagbagger** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 7:15 pm

thanks for the info, but i already know how to set the pins, that's not the problem, i need to know if i will be able to boot fine without any complications should i switch it to primary

Wilco · Post by **Wilco** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 7:17 pm

providing of course u have got the OS on the the hdd u want to b primary then yer shud work fine if u hav it on the other hdd it prob giv u the option of wich OS u want to boot from

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 7:20 pm

usually at the very start of loadup when your pc is counting ram, there should be a "press [del]" for setup, or something like that. Press key and you'll be in teh BIOS settings. Do an auto-detect and you'll get your chance to designate your drives as master or slave.

/end

FurryCurry · Post by **FurryCurry** » Mon Mar 24, 2003 7:55 pm

Cagbagger wrote:thanks for the info, but i already know how to set the pins, that's not the problem, i need to know if i will be able to boot fine without any complications should i switch it to primary

It should be fine. Go ahead and swap the drives, then set the bios to boot from primary master. If all well it will either: boot right up, or give you that choice screen of which drive to boot from. If it does that, go ahead and choose the first option, then reboot into the second, if the first on the list isn't the right one.

Once you're into the correct windows install, just make sure you have all the data safely moved off the old drive, and format it.

If that doesn't remove the second choice from the list, there's some way to change your bootup options in computer management, but I don't exactly remember how. use the help to find it.