Reformating with 2 Drives

Hi all you geeks.. I'm new to this site and hoping someone out there can help me. I'm currently using a Asus P4P800e Deluxe motherboard which i believe can support 1terra bite of HDD storage, I also have fitted a 200gb SATA Western Digital HDD running XP Pro. I am going to reformat the HDD with XP Media Center and fit another 250gb SATA Western Digital for extra storage. Is it simply just a case of Running the Media Center software on the 200gb to format it and then fit the 250 in place once windows is installed. Or di i have to fit both HDD's and then run windows?????
Like i said.. confused. Thanks.

 

Fit both HDD's and ensure they are bios recognized, then install the OS on the drive or partition you prefer!

http://www.mysuperpc.com/build/pc_sata_install_hard_floppy_drives.shtml

http://tweakhound.com/xp/installxp/installXP1.htm

Regards....

 

Thanks Nitecrawler. I'll give that a go.

 

My preference would be to keep one drive seperate for important data only! (music, video's, photo's, business doc's etc)

And keep your OS installed on the other (system files seperate).

That way, FORMAT does not have to be a four letter word......eerrr six!

Use partitions to gain superior performance!

Regards....

 

My intentions was to keep music video and pics and like you say important stuff on the 250 with windows and all other programs installed on the 200. As for partioning.... er lets just say i don't know how and why. When i first formatted the 200gb hdd that i'm using now with XP Pro SP2 i only achived a capacity of 186gb, Hope i don't have the same prob this time round.

 

Tweakhound.. Very useful info...
thanks nitecrawler.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348

have a read of this dude!

you'll be a pro in no time...!

 

"When i first formatted the 200gb hdd that i'm using now with XP Pro SP2 i only achived a capacity of 186gb"

When you purchase a disk, the size is usually expressed as "Unformatted Capacity". ie; the total number of sectors etc on the media platters. Once you partition and format, these sectors are segmented into clusters of 2, 4, 8KB 'chunks'. (The size of these 'chunks is based upon the file system you choose (FAT16, FAT32, NTFS etc, and the size of the partitions you make.) Once this is done, this information is stored in the MBR (Master Boot Record) and the FAT (File Allocation Tables, of which there are two, one's a backup). All this information to make the disk run is stored on the disk, using up some space. And there are always 'left-over' sectors, too small to be utilized in the structure (less than 2, 4, 8KB's etc). Thus a 40GB disk will only give you 38.xGB. In your case 200GB, once formatted rendered 186GB of formatted, usable space.

 

Sounds like you had the same dilemma as me Dan.. Anyway. I have completed the challenge i had set myself. I now have 1 x 200 & 1 x 250gb Hdd's and i have installed XP Media Edition purchased "over the counter" so all is well. By the was the 250gb Hdd only formats to 136gb. If you ask me i think the manufactrers are having us over a barrel. But now i have loads of extra storage and i'm a happier guy.
Thanks again for all your help on this small issue, something else learned.