Computer Tech question

“Ok, this may not be the best place to ask this question but I know some of you are pretty savvy about computers so here goes:

How is it possible to reboot off the slave hard drive? I put my old hard drive on my "new" computer (win98se) cuz the newer one is faster by comparison. But I have MS office 2000 on the old drive (now the slave) and it won't allow me to copy the shortcut to the Master hard drive. Is it possible to access that program from the Master drive or set it up to reboot and use the old hard drive w/o having to switch the master/slave designation manually?”

“I'll assume the slave hard drive is from another computer with this answer. First, you will encounter many problems, or wont' be able to boot at all, if you did boot from the old drive on the new computer. Too many hardware changes from computer to computer, and all those "drivers" that are installed on the old drive won't be right for the new computer.

Second, most programs can't be run unless they are properly installed by the operating system that is running. In this case you will be trying to run a program that was installed on another version/copy of Windows that isn't running right now (you didn't boot from the old drive). This is due to registry settings, dlls (special sub-programs called dynamic link libraries), etc. etc. that won't be installed at all by the version of Windows you are running from the new hard drive.”

“techntrek is absolutely correct. The best option would be to re-install MS Office 2000 on either drive, as long as the computer was booted with the Operating System you'll be using. This shouldn't be a problem as I'm sure it's a legal version of MS Office 2000 and you have the initial installation media.”

“GEtting programs is really easy off the internet.

My computer doesnt have one piece of "bought" software all mine has been pirated so just get like kazaa lite or dc++ and find the software u need.

But the easiest thing to do is just ask around someone u know has the software u need!!”

“Stealing is both unethical and illegal. The day will come when individuals are identified a having downloaded illegal copies of software. Speaking as someone who works in the software industry, you're basically stealing from software companies.”

“Stealing is both unethical and illegal. The day will come when individuals are identified as having downloaded illegal copies of software. Speaking as someone who works in the software industry, you're basically stealing from software companies.”

“So important, I apparently had to say it twice.”

“Good advice, Skiracer/TnT

BL, I know of that type of software but I choose not to use it. thanks anyway for the thot

Tnt, I have rebooted the "new" computer w/ the old HD (both hd have the same OS: win98se) I did go through the changing the drivers and all that so it will reboot w/ either drive (I have had to tweak it a bit to accept some that it couldn't seem to find: I just found them on the other drive and copied them to disk to transfer to the other hd). I just didn't want to have to constantly take the cover off and switch the slave/master pins and the cable in order to do this cuz I do not have the software. The old hd was used in a business that installed the software on it (It was mine at the time and then the cpu proved to be too slow for the applications they were using so they went and bought a new system anyway and gave me back my 'puter) Now I suppose that is the borderline grey area of legal usage but initially it was all good.”

“You don't need to switch the cabling around if you are using the master and slave settings. The cable location is only important if you use the cable select settings available on some drives. Might save you the hardest part of the switch. Also, if you want to get really adventurous, you could install switches (or one quad-pole dual-throw switch) attached to those pins so you only need to power down, flip the switch(es) and reboot.

Another "cleaner" option would be to ghost the old drive and buy one of the many dual-boot programs out there, then install the ghosted image as the 2nd boot option. Just as messy as option #1, but no wires.

The best option is to just reinstall Office on your new drive and then format the old drive for online storage. I wouldn't try the other 2 options unless I had a really good reason.”

“Maybe what I'll have to do is just make the old drive the Master and use the bigger new drive for storage.”

“On a bit of a tangent....

I replaced my hard drive with a larger one, some time ago, and am now considering adding my old one for storage purposes.

Currently, I have my new drive and CD drive on separate ribbons. I suspect that the best configuration will be to have the two hard drives in the primary possitions on the two ribbons, with the CD burner in the slave possition on my 2nd hard drive.

As long as I'm doing this, I get the impression, that it can make a substantial difference if I move my swap file to the second drive, and get it off the same drive as my OS.

So here's the thing.... the physical limitation of this little tower of mine, dictates that if I use the existing ribbon, I have to put the second hard drive in the slave possition, on the CD burner's ribbon.

Is there a disadvantage to that? Should I just go out and get a longer ribbon, assuming that the plan above is indeed the best configuration? Or does it not make any difference?”

“Hmmm.... I guess if I set the jumper on the CD to slave and the HD to master, instead of leaving that to be determined by position on the ribbon, then the physical position on the ribbon makes no difference what so ever”

“You are correct.”

“Ok, just goes to show what perseverence can do. Finally got all the drivers on the old drive and I'm back in business w/ my MS Office 2000. Now I only hope that the school's upgrade to 2003 software doesn't create problems. (yeah, right!)

Thanks for all the help, Techntrek, skiracer!

It certainly wasn't the easiest option (reconfigure the old drive for the new system) but guess I'm just stubborn and refuse to let technology defeat me. (not that it won't in the long run, but for now, she's running like a pro! At least for a dinosaur, she is.”

“Acronis True Image 9 or Norton Ghost 10?”

“never heard of the first. HATE norton anything.”

“yes”

“Dunno.
I've been places that use both but I can't offer any advise other than more of them used True Image than Ghost.

I just work with 'em not on 'em.”

“The reason I asked is that my primary hard drive on my home computer died earlier this week. Luckily I had a back-up drive that I created with Ghost 2003 when the machine was new -I had backed up our data to it periodically since then so I was able to just reverse the two drives, retrieve what I hadn't backed up from the crippled drive and we're back in business.

I have Ghost 10 (as part of Internet Security) so I copied my now primary drive onto a new slave with it. My drive is partitioned into three parts - system, data and page file. Ghost will only let me copy one partition at a time onto the new drive. Everything appears to have copied fine but that drive won't boot up. It gets to a blue Windows XP (Home) screen and just stares at me. I remember there being some issue with the boot.ini file when I did this last time but I can't remember how I resolved it.

Any ideas or would I be better off with some other software? I'd like to make an exact copy and then have my data (primarily photos) backed up periodically.

Thanks geeks.”

“Blue screen of death = bad

That's about all I've got for you. Sorry.”

“I have always just used the built-in backup function in Windows, checking all drives and "system state". When the drive craps out, just reinstall Windows on your new drive and then do a full restore which will then put all your stuff the way it was.

Even though I'm a tech head I've never seen the point of using drive imaging software for home backups. Its great when you need to install the next version of Windows on 65,000 seats like here at work, but to backup your home computer just use Windows Backup. I've had to use it several times (for individual files and for complete restores) and it has never failed me.”

“Norton disabled my 'puter soooooo many times. after 3 MAJOR crashes, a techie friend of mine fixed it up, TOTALLY removed norton and replaced it with mcaffee, never had a problem after that. this 'puter has mcaffee too, no problems.”

“Thanks techntrek - I'll have to give it a try IF I can install it from the CD that came with my HP (It doesn't come pre-installed with XP Home which is why I didn't even know I have it).

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx”

“Huh, I can't believe they didn't make that one of the first things they included with the basic home installation. Dumb, dumb, dumb. At least you can get it from the CD.”

“Yeah - it's one of the features I missed from 98. I wonder why they hid it.”