Complicated master WIN 98SE FAT32 WIN 2000 NTFS

[donh127]

I gutted my wife's 6 year old WIN 98 SE, ASUS P2FB, PIII 450 with a 70G Westerndigital 5,400 RPM drive. Just before the surgery, I put all of the data files she needed on that drive, along with all of the new drivers for the new components.

I installed a ASUS A7N8X - E Deluxe MB, AMD XP2800+, 2 X 512 M Corsair Value DDR3200, TDK 52X CD RW, Lite-on 16X DVD / CD ROM, and a new Western DIgital 80G 7,200 RPM (with 8M Cache), to the remaining ATI AIW Radeon and the Enermax 465 W. PS.

I removed the WD 5,400 RPM drive, put in only the WD 80G 7,200 drive as single master and loaded WIN 2000 (latest SP and all updates), along with the drivers and software (Winzip, MS Office 2000, publishing software ext.) Computer was working great - fast boot - all is good.

so - the 5,400 WAS master to WIN 98 SE and has all the data - formatted as FAT 32. THe 7,200 IS master with WIN 2000 on it and is formatted NTSF.

So I turned it off, changed the jumper on the WD7,200 to Master (not single drive), added in the WD 5,400 and set it's jumper to slave, made sure that the physical location on the ribbon was correct (black connector to master, grey to slave, and fired it up.

At this point it gets interesting, as the 5,400 is the slave, but had been the master, the machine boots up into WIN 98 from the slave? I tried using all of the WD recommended alternative jumper solutions, including the non-recommended ones because I was using WIN 2000. No change. If I take the slave out and rejumper to single master - all is good.

I intended to has the 5,400 as the "data drive, and the 7,200 as the application drive, but now I am stuck with only one HD, and the 5,400 will not boot as the motherboard changes were too dramatic for it to run in the NForce board. The 7,200 is fine but how can I use both? Plus, all the data is on the WIN 98 5,400 that I can not get to.
Sorry for the length, but I was trying to include all details to make it easier to diagnose.
Any and All help is welcome. THX

[TripleRLtd]

Welcome to WD DonH.
The secret here would have been to install 2k while the second drive was attached to the system. Which you'll most likely have to do again as a repair install. It has to do with all the "security" in 2k. Perhaps -ed can come up with a quick "repair" as I must go.

[donh127]

Welcome to WD DonH.
The secret here would have been to install 2k while the second drive was attached to the system. Which you'll most likely have to do again as a repair install. It has to do with all the "security" in 2k. Perhaps -ed can come up with a quick "repair" as I must go.

Thanks TripleRLtd:
I actually did try that after the first go at this, and it wanted to instal WIN2K over the WIN 98! I canceled that, zero'ed the master HD and started over with only the master drive. I was afraid it would format my slave HD and I would loose the files I need.

That makes me think I am overlooking something simple!.

[confus-ed]

Methinks the boot options in bios are wrong .. very often confusingly there's references to hdd-1 & hdd0 .. whatever the drives are master or slave, this is what controls matters for boot, hdd0 generally refers to master channel 1, hdd1 as slave, channel 1, hdd2 to master on channel 2 & hdd3 as slave on channel 2, though sometimes its the opposite way around !

Try changing this device in the entry for boot order (there may be several entries), generally there's also another option use 'other boot source' - un-tick this to remove uncertainty & get it so it'll only boot from what you tell it & not something else which happens to be plugged in & can be booted from instead ..

BTW NTFS based sytems can read fat, but not the other way around

[donh127]

Methinks the boot options in bios are wrong .. very often confusingly there's references to hdd-1 & hdd0 .. whatever the drives are master or slave, this is what controls matters for boot, hdd0 generally refers to master channel 1, hdd1 as slave, channel 1, hdd2 to master on channel 2 & hdd3 as slave on channel 2, though sometimes its the opposite way around !

Try changing this device in the entry for boot order (there may be several entries), generally there's also another option use 'other boot source' - un-tick this to remove uncertainty & get it so it'll only boot from what you tell it & not something else which happens to be plugged in & can be booted from instead ..

BTW NTFS based sytems can read fat, but not the other way around

Confus-ed:
You are right on - I thank you and my wife thanks you also - I was not looking foreward to sleeping in the dog house. Actually, it was two things you mentioned 1) HDD 0 not HDD1, and 2) "other boot source" had been enabled. Thank you

[confus-ed]

Welcome .. this intenet diagnosis by partial telepathy business is most pleasing .. when it works

[TripleRLtd]

Welcome .. this intenet diagnosis by partial telepathy business is most pleasing .. when it works

Good call -ed. Telethapy, heh? More like Sherlock Holmes and seeing the clue:

I actually did try that after the first go at this, and it wanted to instal WIN2K over the WIN 98

Doctor -ed, hmmm, I like that.