# Hard Drive - Turning Slave Drive into Bootable Primary Drive.



## papaglitch (Dec 18, 2008)

Hi, I need some help. I have been using this hard drive for about a year in a half. I use it to store my files on it because this hard drive im using at the moment is too small. I don’t know how to use it as a bootable drive. I’m building a new computer and I want to use this drive because it’s 200GB. It’s a MAXTOR hard drive and comes with an installation CD but it doesn’t tell me how to turn back into a primary hard drive. It has files on it right now.


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## mattcart (Jan 20, 2009)

The real difference between a "slave" drive and a "bootable" drive is having an operating system installed onto it.
I've got my main OS installed onto my smaller 200gig, and I've got 2 other OS's installed onto my secondary 500gig HD, in separate partitions mind you.

If you've got everything you'd want from the 200gig hard drive backed up, you can easily install your XP onto it, but you'll more than likely need to format that HD during installation. 
If you're using IDE hard drives, and you want your 200gig to be actually labeled as "master" you'll have to change the jumper settings on both of your HD's. The big one to master, and the smaller one to slave, or both to "cable select" and just physically move which connector on your IDE cable is plugged into each HD. If you change the jumpers to specify which HD is the master and which is the slave, you'll also have to physically move where they're currently plugged into the IDE cable.
The very end of an IDE cable is the master connector. IDE cable connectors go *Connector to Motherboard -> Connector to slave drive -> Connector to master drive*

But either case if you want an OS to be installed on a hard drive that already has stuff on it, without playing around with partitioning software, you'll have to format at least your 200gig. But probably want to backup your stuff on the smaller drive, then install your OS on the bigger drive, then boot the new installation of your OS, transfer the backup to your larger drive, then format the smaller one.

It's a long and sometimes complicated process, but if you don't delete something that you want to keep, it could be well worth the effort.


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## Edgedev (Dec 8, 2007)

I suggest a free program like Ease-Us to partition and format without having a big problem with it. It's like Partition Magic but a free version, and it's just as good, if not better.

-EDGE-


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## papaglitch (Dec 18, 2008)

Thank you mattcart, I understand completely. I'm going to print out those instructions and use them on my new computer. Thanks thousand.


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