Hard Drive question (asap please)

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Christian1306

Member
I have a short winter break and I want to solve this within this week.
I have a 10/1997 old hard drive and I want to reinstall the OS on it,using another computer. (around the same age as the hdd )
and the hard drive has the jumper thing set to CSEL,which I have no idea what it means,and i'm afraid to stick this hdd in the computer i want to reinstall the OS from,because I don't want to ruin a 19 year old hard drive.
And if you're curious why i'm using another computer,it is because the computer where this Hard drive is from does not support booting from CD Rom (only floppy ) and I had a windows 98 floppy but it does not work anymore,and the 2 near newer computer 1999 has the option to boot of a CD
Thanks in advice,Christi.
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
CSEL is cable select, where the drive will master/slave itself based on the position in the cable.

With IDE there's two devices per cable, but each must be either specified as master, slave, or cable select (on both devices). Each drive has to be unique as either master or slave as it dictates which set of pins the device utilizes to communicate with the controller. If you only have one drive on the cable, then it really doesn't matter, but the rule of thumb is that the connector on the end of the cable typically goes to a master.

You'll also experience problems if you install windows and change platforms back to the older hardware.
 
C

Christian1306

Member
beers said:
CSEL is cable select, where the drive will master/slave itself based on the position in the cable.

With IDE there's two devices per cable, but each must be either specified as master, slave, or cable select (on both devices). Each drive has to be unique as either master or slave as it dictates which set of pins the device utilizes to communicate with the controller. If you only have one drive on the cable, then it really doesn't matter.
Click to expand...
So,i'm good if i just put it in the computer? Or do I need to change it? Thanks for the very fast response :)
 
C

Christian1306

Member
Yeah, I thought about that too but i don't have any empty floppies anymore,I'll just try it in the PC. Thank you very much,i didn't think that i would solve it this evening.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You won't be able to install windows I the drive in one computer and put in another one and expect it to boot up with different hardware. The machines would have to be the same.
 
C

Christian1306

Member
johnb35 said:
You won't be able to install windows I the drive in one computer and put in another one and expect it to boot up with different hardware. The machines would have to be the same.
Click to expand...
I know but i'll just install it like half way,until it puts the boot things on the Hard drive (first reboot in windows 98's case,after it formats and installs the first section).
I know how to do this,i just didn't know about the hard drive.
 
R

russell_314

New Member
johnb35 said:
You won't be able to install windows I the drive in one computer and put in another one and expect it to boot up with different hardware. The machines would have to be the same.
Click to expand...

Just reading the forms and came across this. It is possible because I booted my son's desktop into Windows 7 with a hard drive that came from my old computer. It was completely different CPU and motherboard (Intel vs AMD)l. I didn't test performance or launch any programs because it was just to get a file off the drive. I'm pretty sure it would have caused major issues and BSOD if I was to use it but I was shocked that it even booted.
 
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