Additional Hard drives not available

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ed Nachman
  • Start date Start date
E

Ed Nachman

I just went from W2K to XP Home Edition. The system sees
my Drives formerly known as "E:" and "F:" but they are not
shown in Windows Explorer. They are seen in Disk
Management but without driver letters. When I right click
on either of these drives, the only options
are "Partition" and "Help" I saved a lot of informtion
on these drives prior to loading XP Home Edition.
 
This is the original message. I suspect you are looking at
a thread that was submitted after mine.
 
ED,

Start Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk
Management. Once the drives populate the list, find one of the drives that
is not being recognized. Is it reading as Healthy? If so, right click on
it and then click on initialize or restore connection. (I can't remember
exactly what the word is but I think you get the idea) This will allow the
drive to be recognized by XP. Find the other drive and do the same.. There
should be no reason you can't access the drives except for this. XP doesn't
automatically pick up drives sometimes and this will let XP know the drive
is available.
 
LVTravel,

The letterless drive's "Status" is "Healthy(Active). If I
right click I have two choices, "Delete Partition"
and "Help"

Ed
 
OK, the drive is OK.

Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel. When CP opens, double click on
Administrative Tools, double click on Computer Management then click on Disk
management. Once the list is populated by all Hard and CD drives, scroll to
the drive in question.

Look around by right clicking on different areas of the drive without a
letter. Somewhere you will see either of the two responses below.
Whichever you find use. DO NOT format or partition the drive because that
will remove all data on the disk and it is not needed. One of the two
responses below will fix your problem. Just have to find out which one.

If the option to initialize the disk is available use it. The drive should
now be able to be used.

If the disk is listed as missing or offline, right click on the drive and
click reactivate disk.
 
LVTravel,

I checked with PC Tech Talk and it was mentioned that W2K
is NTFS 4 and XP is NTFS 5. Maybe that's why XP can't
read the files or assign a Drive Letter. That could be
the reason it asks if I want to partition the drive. It
asked that when I originally loaded the XP OS when I had
W2K on the system for a choice of booting either OS. I
also can't get it to network with (2)Windows 98 and (1)W2K
computer. Microsoft has really dumped on W2K users.
 
LVTravel,

I checked with PC Tech Talk and it was mentioned that W2K
is NTFS 4 and XP is NTFS 5. Maybe that's why XP can't
read the files or assign a Drive Letter. That could be
the reason it asks if I want to partition the drive. It
asked that when I originally loaded the XP OS when I had
W2K on the system for a choice of booting either OS. I
also can't get it to network with (2)Windows 98 and (1)W2K
computer. Microsoft has really dumped on W2K users.
 
I have taken drives from 98, NT 4 & 2000 systems and had to initialize/place
online every drive when attaching to XP systems. Yes there is more than one
version of NTFS "format" but NT & 2000 version of NTFS can be read and
written to by XP.

BTW, I'm getting ready to put a XP NTFS drive into a 2000 box. I wonder
what will happen to it.
 
This is about the problem I was having getting XP to give
drive letters to two of my drives. It only gave me c:
drive. In disk management you could see the drives but
there wasn't a drive letter associated with the drives.
Nothing I did would solve my problem. Took the problem to
a good friend who is a certified IT and he couldn't figure
it out. Anyway, I decided to leave the problem alone and
start loading programs for XP. My first was Zone Alarm.
No problem. Then Norton System Works. I checked with
WinDoctor and it said I had a couple of problems. I
advised the program to fix the problem. I don't know why
but now I can see the two drives and the associated
letters to the drives. I am leaving well enough alone.
No questioning. Thanks for being interested enough in
trying to help me.
 
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