how do i set my external hard drive as a slave?

Question

Ive bought an external hard drive which is 160GB where as my internal hard drive is only 20GB. I want to set my external hard drive as my main one to store things on, i think its called a slave. How do i do this? I have windows XP, but ive looked in the control panel, and i cant seem to do it!!

Answer 1

If it's external, I'm guessing it's eSATA or USB 2.0 connected, which then there's no slave/master designations.



You should be able to manage the device in:



control_panel/ administrator_tools/ computer_management/ storage/ disk_management



Right click and format the external drive and you should be able to just copy files to it for storage.



Update: I don't believe it's possible to make everything automatically store to another drive, unless you install the OS onto the external drive and make it the active drive. Which in the USB case, would be a bad idea as USB just isn't fast enough for running programs and OSs at once with a decent speed.



You can make certain programs save/store to that drive through their preferences and settings, but you can't make it a universal default as windows would probably have issues with saving/running automatic updates, programs updates, etc.



If you want to install programs to that storage just replace the "C:" or what your default boot drive letter is, to the letter of the storage drive. Though, I wouldn't suggest an external USB drive to run programs off of. If it's an eSATA you can do it no problem.

Answer 2

My other computer has two hard drives, both internal.

The C drive is the master, a 2gb drive with Windows 98 installed. The D drive is the slave, a 20gb drive with Windows XP installed. I also have a 320gb external hard drive with 4 partitions K,L,N and M. all my programs which are not operating system programs or tasks were place onto the L partition of my external hard drive. This was done when installing the programs by altering destination directory/folder from C:\Programs\...whatever to L:\...whatever.



Which is all you need to do. Just alter the destination directory when installing the software. Do assign the external drive a Letter(s) when setting a partition(s), that way when you plug another device into you computer the operating system will not alter the letter assign to the drive. If you don't assign a drive letter to the partition(s) of the external drive then you will find that you will have problems accessing your programs at a latter date, if you plug another device into the computer. Microsoft have documented the problem.



PS.

Forgot to add. Setting up a USB drive as a boot drive is possible if the BIOS allows it. My other computer's BIOS does allow boot up on a USB device, this one's doesn't. I would only boot up on an external drive if the internal drive wouldn't boot - if I could.

Answer 3

You shouldn't have to do anything to your hard drives. A slave refers to when you have 2 internal drives on one ide cable. One has to be the slave, but it has nothing to do with how the drives work. Just use your external drive to store all your data and what not. There is no difference in the drives the way your computer sees them.

Answer 4

master is a primary

slave is a secondary



you cant set an external hard drive as a slave or master, its plug and play. as if it was just memory storage. The computer does not boot through usb.



to have the affect of a master or slave drive it must be connect via IDE or SATA is inside the computer.

the hard drive as a jumper pin the back of it. read the instructions manual.



but you shouldnt touch it if you dont know what youre doing.

Answer 5

Not sure what you are trying to do? If you are trying to reduce memory load by not using USB the only thing you can do is remove the drive from the enclosure and install it in the pc. The memory savings would be minimal. Otherwise a USB drive acts just like a slaved HD drive.

Answer 6

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!



IN THE DAYS OF ATA HARD DRIVES, 2 DRIVES SHARED ONE RIBBON CABLE

ONE HAD TO BE A MASTER THE OTHER A SLAVE

YOUR EXTERNAL DRIVE IS ON ITS OWN ON 1 USB CABLE ITS JUST A MASS STORAGE DEVICE

I DON'T THINK YOU CAN BOOT FROM USB [UNLESS YOUR MOTHERBOARD SUPPORTS THAT]SO YOU CANT MAKE IT THE MAIN DRIVE



WHY NOT JUST BUY AN INTERNAL HARD DRIVE AND [IF ITS ON IDE CABLE] SET IT AS SLAVE

OR IF ITS SATA JUST PLUG IT IN - JOB DONE!

Answer 7

If you mean that you want your My Documents folder on the external drive:



http://www.techsupportalert.com/how_to_move_my_documents.htm

Answer 8

no need to set it to slave if its external.