Cannot see other SATA HD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alan T
  • Start date Start date
A

Alan T

I recently installed XP on SATA HD, however, opening Windows Explorer cannot
see my second SATA HD. Any idea?
I am sure the second SATA is connected properly because if I boot into VISTA
can see it.
 
Yes, the BIOS and Device Manager both show the Seagate harddisk.
I goto Computer Management shows that it is a dynamic disk, but does not
show the capacity of the harddisk, ie 250 GB.
 
Ron Badour said:
Has the drive been partitioned and formatted?
Regards
Ron Badour
MS MVP 1997 - 2007
Click to expand...


Alan:
For starters, I'm assuming that this problem you're having is with a
*secondary* SATA HDD that you installed; we're not talking about a boot
drive here, right?

Are you running the Home Ed. of XP? If so, that might account for the
problem you're experiencing. As such, this version of the XP OS cannot
access data on a dynamic (foreign) disk. Most likely that drive was
mistakenly originally created as a "dynamic" disk - instead of a "basic"
disk when you installed it in your present system or in a previous OS. While
there are situations where a HDD should be created as a "dynamic" disk, it's
a relatively rare situation for most users where this is necessary.

In any event, the Home Ed. of XP cannot access data on a dynamic disk. It
"sees" the disk as "foreign". You can, however, convert the disk to a
"Basic" disk in your present system.

Assuming that this *is* the problem...

In Disk Management, simply right-click on the drive (the area where the disk
is shown as "Dynamic") and select the "Convert to Basic Disk" from the
sub-menu that opens. Understand that when you do this, all data on the disk
will be lost - the data will be destroyed. The disk will then be reflected
as "Unallocated" and you can then go ahead with partitioning/formatting it
in Disk Management.
Anna
 
Alan T said:
I recently installed XP on SATA HD, however, opening Windows Explorer
cannot
see my second SATA HD. Any idea?
I am sure the second SATA is connected properly because if I boot into
VISTA
can see it.
Click to expand...

You mention later that this second disk is dynamic, and is shown in Disk
Manager. If the XP version is Home, the problem is that the disk is
dynamic. To see it, you'd have to either upgraded to XP Pro or switch the
disk to basic, which pretty much requires wiping that disk and starting
over.


HTH
-pk
 
Yes, this disk is dynamic.
But my version is XP Pro.
I had previously the XP Pro on my old harddisk can see this dynamic disk and
put data on this dynamic disk, so far so good. Then my old harddisk had a
problem need a replacement.
This problem only happens when I bought a new harddisk and installed XP Pro,
then it cannot see this dynamic disk from Windows Explorer.
 
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