As I understand it, you are trying to copy files from your hard drive to
your Dell in order to free up space on your hard drive and/or so that you
can reformat your hard drive and not lose important data.

You have two ways of installing your hard drive (I will call it HD) into
your Dell.  You can put it on the same cable as the Dell hard drive.  You
will need to set the jumpers on the HD to "slave"  (remember to change them
back when you are done!!!), and you need to set the jumper on the Dell hard
drive to "master."  If there is a cd on the cable and you remove it, the
Dell will already be set to master.  The other way is to hook up your HD to
the secondary channel, if it is not in use.  You could use the cable from
your other computer.  Set the HD as a single drive.  This way is easier.
Make sure the line on the edge of the cable is connected to pin 1 on both
the motherboard and the HD.

Now, if your bios see both drives, you should be able to boot into Windows
on your Dell and go to Windows Explorer and see both drives listed, although
the drive letters may be changed, temporarily.  (Your Dell hard drive should
still be C:)

If you  have never done this before, it may be daunting, but you will learn
how to do it quickly enough.  Then you will know how to do it in the future.

Once you can see both drives in  the Dell, you can start copying files.  Do
not use DOS.  It is much easier to do in Windows.  (I assume that you have
Windows on your Dell.)   In Windows Explorer you hold the shift key down and
left-click on a file or directory and, holding the key down, move the cursor
over to the C: drive and then release the mouse button.  (Drag and drop.)
This should copy the file or directory from the hard drive to the Dell hard
drive.  Because you held the shift key down, the old file will be deleted.
(If your just wanted to copy the file, you would hold down the ctrl key,
instead.)  Practice with a few unimportant files first and see if they work.
(I think this will work in My Computer, too, but I use Explorer.)

I think that this should do what you want.

In my earlier post, I said that reformmating your hard drive should be a
last resort, and  probably not necessary.  I still think that.  But, if you
want to create a little space on the drive, it probably will not hurt
anything and **may** solve your problem.  Please be mentally prepared for
continued problems, however.  Consider that you are "paying your dues," in
learning how the insides of the computer work. :) :)  Most of the people
that contribute to the list have suffered countless hours trying to get
stuff to work - and learning in the process.  That's why we are sharing our
knowledge with you - so it won't take you so long.  Good luck.  (It is a
real feeling of accomplishment when you finally get everything working!)

Dean Kukral

PS:  the DOS commands for looking at the directory  are: dir /p if I
remember correctly.  The slash comes before the "p" and is opposite of the
slash in the path.  I always used to forget that, too.  The command for copy
is a little more difficult to use.   Something like,

copy myfile c:\myfile

It is much easier to drag and drop in Windows!



----- Original Message -----
From: Venkat Viswanathan
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 10:28 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] win98 se problem

My non working pc (in which I do not have space to reload win98se and which
I am trying to do by creating space)has a quantum fireball hdd of 4 gig and
partitioned into "c" and "d" of equal capacity.  win os resides on "c". My
dell has a maxtor HDD model 1c6a-1efc of 7 gig and all of it in a single
logical drive "c".

I took your input and connected the dell maxtor as slave and the quantum as
master. bios showed as such. saved and exited. but while loading os i got an
"invalid system disc error" and inspite of 2/3 ctrl/alt/del same error.

so I powered off and connected the maxtor as primary master and quantum as
slave and booted up. when I double clicked "my computer" it showed "c"
"d",and "e" and also the floppy and dvd player in the dell.  but the problem
now is that logical drive "d" which is my logical drive c in the non working
pc has got the windows application icon whereas "c" and "e" have got the
storage disk icons.

when I double click "c",and "e" both show all my data and programs but if I
double click "d" I get a msg saying I need autorun.exe program to run this
drive and asks me where to find it!  when I went into dos mode and typed
D:\DIR P\ I get a msg saying "volume in drive d has no label and volume
serial is 1c6a-1efc. If I simply type D:\dir it scrolls up like lightning
and I can see only the last 8/10 files!

I will greatly appreciate if u can guide me how to proceed further. Thanks
again and have a very nice day--venkat viswanathan"

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