CD-RW and zip drives

[Christopher Low 5,353]

My existing 250Mb zip drive is becoming next to useless as a backup drive. Inserting the disks has become a nightmare of "insert, eject, insert, eject......." until the drive finally acknowledges the existence of the disk. As you can imagine, this isn't particularly amusing, and so I am considering a replacement. Since I have a CD-RW in my office PC, it makes sense to add one of these to my home PC (thereby facilitating the transfer of large files between the two PC's).Bearing this in mind, I would just like to know if there is any particular routine that I should follow when doing this. Currently, my zip drive is the D: drive, and my DVD is the E: drive. If I remove the zip drive, and install the CD-RW drive at the same time, what will happen when I reboot the PC ? Will the CD-RW be seen as the D: drive, or will the DVD drive become the D: drive, and the CD-RW become the E: drive ? :-eek Does anyone know what will happen ? The zip drive is currently the primary slave drive to the hard disk (although I'm sure that this was a mistake, since the zip drive is only ATA-33, as opposed to the ATA-100 of the hard disk). Does this mean that I should connect the CD-RW as the secondary slave drive to the DVD drive.....thereby allowing the hard disk to operate at its full bandwidth ?When you have got your heads around this, can you offer any suggestions ? :-)Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest cornclose]

Chris,If I were you I wouldn't remove hardware then replace it with something else without at least one clean reboot in between.The way I would do it is this :-1. Remove the ZIP drive from device manager.2. Power down and remove the ZIP drive physically3. Power up and boot into XP, make sure everything is OK, check that the ZIP drive is gone from device manager.4. Power down and install the CD-RW drive, I would make it secondary slave alongside your DVD drive as it would be unlikely for you to be watching DVD's at the same time as writing CD's or vice versa. Then you would have just the ATA100 hard disk on primary master, with primary slave unused (ready for that new hard disk you might want in future).5. Power on and boot up, XP should detect drivers for the CD-RW, and may ask you to boot one more time. Drive letters may get swapped about, but at least your HDD will still be C: and the other two drives may or may not be what they used to be, but you can always change the drive letters later in disk administrator.Hope this helps.RegardsChris E, ENGLANDhttp://www.circle-software.co.ukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Yep, that sounds good to me.I have just transferred all of the files from my two zip disks to a temporary directory on the hard disk. It took a fair bit of prodding and poking around in the zip drive before the disks were noticed :-) I will very likely order a CD-RW drive later tonight or tomorrow, and then follow your instructions to the letter. Blank CD's are as cheap as tea bags, so I don't need to worry about that :-)I should soon have all of those FU3 upgrades stored on two separate, shiny CD's. Do you think that I should keep these in some kind of safe ? After all, they are rather priceless :-lolChris Low,ENGLAND.

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Well, after two hours of messing around "under the hood", I have managed to install my new CD-RW drive. This is currently being held together by three screws (it was physically impossible to get the fourth screw in), but it seems secure enough. This is now the D: drive, and is the secondary slave to the E: drive (DVD). Surprisingly, it works :-)The old 250Mb zip drive is still located directly above the floppy drive, but it has been disabled (all the wires have been pulled out). Once again, removing this would have been more trouble than you can possibly imagine....and I really couldn't be bothered :-)My final mission is to get all of my back-up files transferred onto two shiny new CD's, so that is a task that will be done tonight. When that has been done, those priceless FU3 upgrades that you all know and love will be safely housed in a new home ;-) Chris Low,ENGLAND.