Right a few questions for the learned,

I have today installed an extra HDD, primarily so that I can back up my OS /programs/data in case of HDD failure.

Now Disk No 1 a 40GB HDD is split into C: drive 30GB [9 GB used] status: Primary boot. And D: drive 10GB [1GB used] status: Primary extended logical.

Disk No 2, the new 30GB HDD is split into [unallocated Primary size 7.8MB] with extended Primary split into logical partitions G: and H:  and for now unused, but obviously I can have more partitions.

Presently Disk No 1 has W2K OS and programs are on C: drive, and my data and files are on D: drive.  Now whilst I will be saving a compressed image of C: and D: drives onto the new HDD [I have PQ Drive Image] lets just consider if the 40GB HDD does go belly up.

I was thinking:

Would it be possible to set Disk No 2 up, so that I could restore/copy the saved image of Disk No 1 onto two drives on Disk No2 ?

Drives set up right now as Disk No1 Master, Disk No2 Slave, is it possible to set Disk No 2 up as bootable with W2K installed on it also, I mean as I?m I right in thinking as long as Disk No1 is bootable it would boot the OS on that disk. What I?m asking is, if Disk No 1 was not bootable either corrupted OS or HDD failure would it boot off Disk No 2 if the boot sequence was C:/A:/ G: or I?m I talking complete bollards.  

If bollards is the answer, if Disk No1 fails will I have to whip open the case and set Disk No2 to Master and swap the cable connectors over, and make a primary active partition using Partition Magic.

Well let the lesson begin  

PS: choices with HDD's Master / Slave / and Cable enable, first to are self explanatory but why the option 'Cable Enable'

PS: choices with HDD's Master / Slave / and Cable enable, first to are self explanatory but why the option 'Cable Enable'

Cable Enable - is that the same as Cable Select?

Cable Select enables a system where the drive on the furthest end of the IDE cable is Master and the drive connected to the central connector is Slave.

All the info you need from www.pcguide.com

don't you need a Raid enabled board to 'Mirror' or is that why you are saying ditch D: drive.

No that's the beauty of a "proper" OS like Win2K and XP Pro. The mirroring and striping (if you want it) is built-in. Of course the performance is slightly better if you have a RAID controller.

Hang on ...

Don't merge the 2 drives Tony the mirrored partitions need to be the same size.

Leave C: at 30GB so it matches your 30GB second drive

Hang on ...

Don't merge the 2 drives Tony the mirrored partitions need to be the same size.

Leave C: at 30GB so it matches your 30GB second drive

Back after complications  > to read this   anyway I could not merge the two drives Adept because I kept getting Error 58 in PM which said >Unable to write to the boot sector, virus Protection software may be running. Just kept saying press any key to escape, but just kept going around in the same circle, till I reverted to Goback. Plus I could not revert Disk No1 to 'unallocated' as it stated on the Microsoft site , it needed to be pior to mirroring. How do I do that ?

OK first time I attempted merging C and D drives Norton was running but I disabled it, and boot virus protection was not enabled in Bios setup, but I still kept getting those error messages. In the end it was all begining to hang, so I have whipped out the extra drive and reverted my system back 3and a half hours, all ok now.


Sandra your confusing me, I read when W2K assigned a drive letter it stuck with that drive.

Anyway I'll go back and read that Microsoft site, and if Disk No1  indeed needs to be unallocated, i'll have to sort that first.

Plus if I leave D: drive on Disk 0, but it is not going to get mirror, I will have to move its contents over on tho the C: Drive. If I knew you could mirror without a raid board I woukld have bought a 40GB HDD instead of a 30GB drive, oh well. I any case mirroring ain't happened yet    

As far as I am aware Tony any windows OS designates a drive letter in the lowest available that is presently unused.
Therefore yopu had C and D on your single primary hard drive and I assume E and F were your CD/DVD rom and CD writer.
When you installed the second hard drive as two partitions it will have assigned the primary partion on your second drive as D ( changing your original D partition to the next available letter which in this case would be G ).
Then leaving the second partion on your secondary hard drive to be H.
Windows will not allow a drive letter to be changed if it has an OS on it,as I found out when I tried to do it with mine,otherwise when that os is "looking" for something on C/program/xxxxx it would actually then be searching for it on C drive and not the drive where it had been moved to  

If you want to merge your original C and D drives then uninstall your second drive first and reboot with the original drive in,then I would use PM to make the C drive a reasonable sized partition for you to mirror it or else you are going to have backed up successfully in case of any disaster but have no more spare capacity than you started with  

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Tony ignore that Sandra - she's just trying to confuse you

When you mirror your c: partition it will remain your c: partition; your d: partition will also remain the same, simply not mirrored.

The Drive 1 will have to be unallocated before you can use it as a mirror. This should just be a question of deleting the existing partition using the Windows 2000 Disk Manager.

Cheers Adept, I'll pop the extra HDD back in and get it back to unallocated, plus I'll make C: drive exactly the same size as the Unallocated drive, And have a go from there.

Sandra means well   oh your there   if you read the PDF doc in PM it tells you about how W2K assignes drive letters. Right I'm off  to meddle again , it's all grist to the mill as they say.  

No I'm not Sandra I would never disagree with you

I'm sure you are right about the drive letters. It's just that it isn't relevant for Tony's mirroring situation  

Tony is going to be mirroring the c: partition from drive 0 onto drive 1. Any partitions which are currently on drive 1 will need to be wiped off so that the 30GB c: partition can be mirrored onto the 30GB drive 1.