slim drive substitute

[slaird]

Hello-
My father purchased an HP e-PC 40 but when he received it, there was no cd-rom drive.

He looked into getting a cd-rom drive and found out that it requires a special slim drive (will a notebook drive work in here? or is it special for each model?).

Being that it was going to cost him about $80 for a drive, he never purchased one. He just networked it to his other computer and ran it that way.

However, now the operating system has gone bad and I need to do a re-install. I have tried several things. I have removed the hard drive and loaded Windows 98 using another computer and then put the hard drive back in. I then used a second computer to power a cd-rom and ponied the harddrive and the cd-rom together (laid out on top of the case) and loaded the XP Pro version (but didn't register it, just to try it) that worked.

However, I can't load the recovery cd this way because the cd-drive has to be bootable and the harddrive has to be in the master position (at least that is what I think, I can't get it to work the other way).

So the only way to use the legal copy of Windows (the recovery cd) is to connect to the slim drive connector (secondary ide). What are your suggestions to resolve this issue?(besides buying an $80 drive)

USB cd-rom won't work unless I get a USB floppy drive to load the drivers (not an option)

1) Is there an adapter out there that I can use to temporarily connect and load the operating system?

2) Will any slim drive work or are there specific?

3) Is there a place to buy used or cheaper slimdrives?

Thanks for your help. This has become a beat the COMPANY issue with me lately.

[RicheemxX]

my understanding is these take laptop style drives so you'd need to to know the interface that is compatible with your motherboard and just match a drive to that. Ebay has had some great deals on used laptop drives but you'll have to make sure it will fit in there and the connections are the same.

however you should be able to get the reovery cd to work the same as you did the xp cd.

[slaird]

How do you get the recovery cd to work if the cd rom is secondary and not bootable? For the XP Pro version, I had to previously load WIN 98 and then run the XP Setup from the cd-rom while in windows.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[slaird]

BTW are there many different notebook drive formats out there or is it limited to a few?

[RicheemxX]

here's a link to one for 39.99 should work but I'm not sure http://www.mitsumidirect.com/product...products_id=71

http://www.compdisk.com/index.cfm?fu...pProducts&ID=3

[RicheemxX]

Originally posted by slaird
BTW are there many different notebook drive formats out there or is it limited to a few?

alot of the diference is in the fit in the drive bays, but there are a few different types of connections that the different manf use. If you had any idea what the part number is or what the interface is it would make finding the drive easier.

as for getting the cd to work I think I was mistaken I think I was doing a new install as you did the first time.

[HeadBand]

did you try changing the bios to boot from cd before harddrive

[smitty308]

I had the same problem and found that the cost would be too high for a cheap computer. I mounted a regular CD ROM on top of the case and ran the cables through holes that I cut.

Good Luck
Smitty

[slaird]

Smitty,
Were you able to get it to do a system restore with this configuration? I can't seem to get my system to boot from the cd-rom and restore to the hard drive.

I have played around with the bios and made sure the cd-rom boot is first. However, when it does boot from the cd-rom, I can't get it to recognize the harddrive.

I can only get it to boot from the cd-rom when it is the Master and the HD is the slave.

[smitty308]

I didn't try a system restore from my setup. I did however completely install W 98SE and all the drivers and programs with the setup. And I used a boot floppy.

Good Luck
Smitty