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Tried to install new hard drives: no luck. (1 Viewer)

Brett_H

Second Unit
Joined
Oct 3, 2001
Messages
341
All,
Just an update on this one.
In short: total crash and burn. 0 success. All due to the limitation of my Compaq pc, which I should have seen coming.
What was I trying to do? Well, as I mentioned inthis thread, I scored a sweet deal on a pair of Western Digital 40 Gig drives. I figured I'd be able to put them in my existing Compaq PC and be off and running. I can hear you all laughing now, and with good reason. I was a complete moron for even thinking this could be done...
To make things more interesting, I decided to buy a Promise ATA100 controller card to take "full advantage" of the speed of the drives. For $30 I figured I couldn't go wrong...HA!
Problems?
No available PCI slots. Had to remove 3DFX 16 MB video card to install Promise ATA100 controller card. Not cool, but since I don't play games I wasn't that concerned about falling back on the built-in video.
No room in case for additional hard drive. This was a little tougher to swallow, but I figured at this point I could just image the OEM drive to one of the WD drives and use 1 drive for now... WRONG for reasons explained below!
No additional power sources for additional drives. Had to unplug the OEM CD drive to even get power to a 2nd HDD while I tried to image/format it. Not an acceptable long term solution.
I eventually unhooked both CD drives so that I could hook the OEM HDD to IDE channel 1 and the new drive to IDE channel 2. This, I thought, would at least let me image the original drive.
Oh, and did I mention that I wanted to accomplish this WITHOUT having to reinstall W2K? Read on...
I'm using Windows 2000 with NTFS. Silly me for assuming Western Digital could write a program to deal with this. Turns out I couldn’t use Western Digital's drive imaging utility to copy the OEM drive.
I had a copy of Ghost that I borrowed from work, so I tried to copy the OEM drive using that. After 15 minutes, it said it was done. So I removed the OEM drive, hooked up the new drive as master on IDE channel #1, and tried to boot. I got as far as the Win2K splash screen before it bluescreen'd with an inaccessible boot device error.
At this point, I threw in the towel for the day and decided to get it back to normal, minus the video card.
So now my options are as follows:
1. Install the new hard drive as the only hard drive in the system, and install Win2K along will all of my apps from scratch.
2. Buy a new (or used) mobo and case and transfer my existing Processor, RAM, hard drives, CD, CD-R, video, and sound over to that. Buy a NIC while I'm at it since my current PC at least has an onboard NIC that can be used with my DSL.
3. Same as #2 except go all out and get a new processor to go along with it all.
Options 1 and 3 sound the most likely, since my processor isn't all that (AMD K6-2 500) and the case is totally full as it is. It's beginning to look like the "deal" I got on those drives is going to cost me a lot more in the end!
OK, rant over. If anyone out there has any used hardware I should be aware of, I'd love to know about it!
Thanks for listening,
-Brett.
 

Randy_T

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Dec 18, 2001
Messages
95
Hey Brett,
I was afraid of that. Check out Link Removed
Look at the "Barebones" section. I'll bet you will be able to get a very good price on a case,processor,and mainboard.
I have bought a lot of computer components from them and they have always treated me right. Let me know what you decide.
Randy T
 

Darren Lewis

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jul 17, 2000
Messages
534
I think option #1 is the one to go with - it's the cheapest. I've had problems when transfering Windows 2000 NTFS to new hardware. Usually best to do a clean install.

Doesn't Compaq store their BIOS on the hard drive? Perhaps when you copied the drive you transfered the BIOS across too?
 

Glenn Overholt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 24, 1999
Messages
4,201
What a mess! I think I'd go along with 1 as well, but I just had to throw this in.

Several years ago I got a 2nd hard drive, only to discover that I was out of drive bays. I got 2 extra drive mounting brackets (the 'U' shaped ones), bolted them to the other 2 brackets that I had and bolted it to the bottom of my PC case, and then bolted the drive to it.

Glenn
 

Brett_H

Second Unit
Joined
Oct 3, 2001
Messages
341
Guys,

Thanks for the recommendations. I think my best bet for now is to pick up a used Asus P5A motherboard that I saw for $25 and mate it with a $50 case that I can buy locally. I remembered that I got a cheap NIC with my DSL install package, so I can use that and I should be set.

Does anybody see any potential problems transferring this stuff over:

AMD K6-2/500 processor

Compaq CD drive

Yamaha 16x IDE burner

256 MB PC133 RAM

WD 40 GIG HD's (x2)

Promise ATA100 IDE controller card

Cheap NICCompaq 3.5" floppy

I might even use my 8 GB OEM drive as an archival storage drive for downloads and such.

Think I should be OK? I have another old PC laying around that I can scavenge for screws, risers, and such...

Thanks for all your input!

-Brett.
 

Darren Lewis

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jul 17, 2000
Messages
534
Can't foresee any immediate problems. Asus motherboards are very good. You'll probably need to re-install the OS from scratch.
 

Hugh M

Second Unit
Joined
Dec 31, 2001
Messages
324
hello,
you may also want to look into the ECS 735 motherboard, which is $57, at www.newegg.com ...includes onboard NIC...This would work great with a high speed CPU, it is a very fast board. for the price it cannot be beat.
I honestly don't know if your processor fits into the same socket as on that motherboard though. But even an AMD 1600 is only around $100 currently.
the even better upgrade would be to get a Soyo Dragon Plus motherboard. You can find this at newegg.com as well for ~$125..this includes NIC, as well as a nice onboard sound unit which will give you digital out for DVDs as well. This motherboard also has 4 IDE Channels, which will allow you to connect 8 devices. (you've already got the promise though) this mottheboard comes highly recommended.
but in the meantime if you want to keep with your current setup you should be fine with your plan.
 

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