HELP! MY Computer cannot find hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael S.
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael S.

This is a new computer build in progress. The mobo is a P4C800-ED and
everything has worked great until I moved my IDE backup drive from my
previous computer that was running XP-Pro to the new computer as a back-up
drive, also running XP-Pro. The boot drive(s) are a pair of Raptors
configured as RAID 0. The Promise controller is disabled in BIOS so that I
am only using the Intel IDE/RAID controller. The optical drive is on the
Secondary IDE controller configured as a master. The RAID drives are coming
off of the RAID connectors on the mobo. I attached the Maxtor back-up drive
(removed from my old Dell) to the Primary IDE controller and left it
configured as a Master.

In the BIOS, I set the boot sequence to the Raptors and it showed the Maxtor
drive being present.

Device Manager in WinXP shows both the Maxtor and the RAID 0 volume and both
to be functioning normally with device usage enabled for both.

If I right click the CD-RW in "My Computer" and then click the hardware tab,
all drives (RAID 0, Maxtor, floppy and CD-RW are shown)

When I go into Control Panel and click Add Hardware and have Windows do an
inventory of hardware, it finds the Maxtor and other drives.

All of the above sounds wonderful--BUT--when I go into MY COMPUTER, the
Maxtor Drive is not shown AT ALL, just "C" for the RAID 0 Raptors and "D"
for the CD-RW.

I removed the CD-RW and nothing changed regarding the Maxtor backup drive
(it has no operating system--it is just a backup drive to be used to
transfer its files to the RAID volume.

Anyone have any ideas as to how to get the new build to find the backup
drive in "My Computer" so I can transfer its files to the new computer and
use it for backup purposes?

MikeSp
 
"Michael S." said:
This is a new computer build in progress. The mobo is a P4C800-ED and
everything has worked great until I moved my IDE backup drive from my
previous computer that was running XP-Pro to the new computer as a back-up
drive, also running XP-Pro. The boot drive(s) are a pair of Raptors
configured as RAID 0. The Promise controller is disabled in BIOS so that I
am only using the Intel IDE/RAID controller. The optical drive is on the
Secondary IDE controller configured as a master. The RAID drives are coming
off of the RAID connectors on the mobo. I attached the Maxtor back-up drive
(removed from my old Dell) to the Primary IDE controller and left it
configured as a Master.

In the BIOS, I set the boot sequence to the Raptors and it showed the Maxtor
drive being present.

Device Manager in WinXP shows both the Maxtor and the RAID 0 volume and both
to be functioning normally with device usage enabled for both.

If I right click the CD-RW in "My Computer" and then click the hardware tab,
all drives (RAID 0, Maxtor, floppy and CD-RW are shown)

When I go into Control Panel and click Add Hardware and have Windows do an
inventory of hardware, it finds the Maxtor and other drives.

All of the above sounds wonderful--BUT--when I go into MY COMPUTER, the
Maxtor Drive is not shown AT ALL, just "C" for the RAID 0 Raptors and "D"
for the CD-RW.

I removed the CD-RW and nothing changed regarding the Maxtor backup drive
(it has no operating system--it is just a backup drive to be used to
transfer its files to the RAID volume.

Anyone have any ideas as to how to get the new build to find the backup
drive in "My Computer" so I can transfer its files to the new computer and
use it for backup purposes?

MikeSp
Click to expand...

Is the backup drive larger than 128GB (137GB as defined by disk
manufacturers) ? Perhaps only one of your two computers is running
SP1 service pack for WinXP.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q303013

HTH,
Paul
 
Thanks Paul, but both computers have SP-1 and the Maxtor drive that Windows
"My Computer" cannot find is an 80 GB drive. When I used to service
computers, I commonly used a data drive to connect to an IDE port and
transfer files, but must have lost my touch!

MikeSp
--------------------------------
 
Check administrative tools -> computer management -> storage -> disk
management. Your drive will be there and it should be apparent what is going
wrong: no letter assignment, or somehow not recognized as having a valid
partition (e.g. if GoBack was installed on the old drive) or whatever.

DAW
 
YEP--the solution was in the storage/disk management. This exact solution
was something with which I have never had any experience--there was a "Drive
0" without any details and right clicking that eventually produced a
dropdown choice something to the effect "Import Foreign Drive" and out of
sheer desperation, I clicked on it and INSTANTLY, the Maxtor and all of its
details with it labeled "Drive D" was showing...what a rush! The only thing
I could guess about this is that the drive was created on a different
computer with the same OS and it had to be officially imported into Windows.

I even deleted the drive from Device Manager and rebooted Windows and sure
enough, new hardware was found and the correct drive was listed in Device
Manager, but it never was given a drive letter until it was imported in
Storage-->Disk Management (WHEW!!)

MikeSp
----------------------------------------------
 
"Michael S." said:
YEP--the solution was in the storage/disk management. This exact solution
was something with which I have never had any experience--there was a "Drive
0" without any details and right clicking that eventually produced a
dropdown choice something to the effect "Import Foreign Drive" and out of
sheer desperation, I clicked on it and INSTANTLY, the Maxtor and all of its
details with it labeled "Drive D" was showing...what a rush! The only thing
I could guess about this is that the drive was created on a different
computer with the same OS and it had to be officially imported into Windows.

I even deleted the drive from Device Manager and rebooted Windows and sure
enough, new hardware was found and the correct drive was listed in Device
Manager, but it never was given a drive letter until it was imported in
Storage-->Disk Management (WHEW!!)

MikeSp
Click to expand...

I wonder what really happened to it.

A search in Google, turned up very few hits for the exact string
"Import Foreign Drive". There is mention that WinXP Home doesn't
support Dynamic Drives, while WinXP Pro does. But, reading about
Dynamic Disks, suggests reverting them to Basic, destroys the
data on them, so the "Import Foreign Drive" cannot be doing
anything that drastic to the drive.

So, I'm puzzled as to exactly what triggered this response. One
Google post mentioned a sort of disk corruption triggering the
need for Import Foreign Drive.

I'm curious, just in case I ever run into a mess like this
on my own machine. If you know something of the background of
the two installs, and how the disk was prepped in the first
place (i.e. did you use Maxblast disk overlay software, did
you actually set up the disk as a dynamic disk etc), please
post it, as there aren't a lot of good examples in Google
already.

Looking in the Microsoft KB for the terms "Import Foreign",
I found this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;254300

"When you upgrade a storage device driver that points to dynamic
disks, you must restart the computer. Use the Disk Management
snap-in to check the status of any affected dynamic disks. The
dynamic disk volumes will remain intact. However, after
restarting the computer, you may need to manually set the volume
to Online status, perform an Import Foreign Disks, or if you
are running Windows 2000 Server with RAID-5, you may need to
regenerate data and parity information."

Does that sound like what happened ?

Paul
 
Paul said:
I wonder what really happened to it.

A search in Google, turned up very few hits for the exact string
"Import Foreign Drive". There is mention that WinXP Home doesn't
support Dynamic Drives, while WinXP Pro does. But, reading about
Dynamic Disks, suggests reverting them to Basic, destroys the
data on them, so the "Import Foreign Drive" cannot be doing
anything that drastic to the drive.
Click to expand...

Paul--I also Googled and found little. The most that I could find was a
small paragraph in the help section of WinXP-Pro: "You can move multiple
disks from different computers to a computer by installing the disks,
opening Disk Management, right-clicking any of the new disks, and then
clicking IMPORT FOREIGN DISKS."

The Maxtor 80 GB HDD was partitioned and formatted (NTFS) by using WinXP
Pro's Disk Management and not the software provided by Maxtor. The pair of
Western Digital Raptor SATA's that were configured as RAID 0 in the new
computer build were set up by WinXP Pro with an Intel RAID plugin when
Windows was installed on the previously bare drives. The Intel controller
on the motherboard controls both RAID drivers as well as two IDE channels
(four IDE devices), so there should have been no issues with compatibility.
At least there was a method whereby a slave drive that was created in one
computer could be safely installed on a different computer--perhaps because
both were running WinXP-Pro. I am not familiar with Basic vs. Dynamic
drives, but in Disk Management in the new computer, the RAID Raptors
constitute a single volume that is listed as a Basic Drive whereas the
backup IDE Maxtor drive was listed as a Dynamic drive. In the old Dell
computer, the Maxtor backup drive is also listed as a Dynamic drive whereas
the WD Caviar 120 GB boot drive is listed as Basic (whatever that means).
All of these drives were NFTS and not FAT32's. I have never dealt with such
an issue before and I have serviced hundreds of standalone and networked
computers for a school district (before retirement) and NEVER ran into such
an issue. If we did not Ghost or otherwise image a hard drive via the
network, we used a hard drive that we laid on the counter and temporarily
plugged into a computer in order to easily transfer files. The Maxtor drive
in question shows "Healty" which is important according to the help files
and AFAIK, the files transferred to the RAID drive(s) in the new computer
fine. With all that said, I guess the bottom line for me is that I am glad
to have had success after hours of scratching my tush and dunno!!!

MikeSp
-----------------------------------------------------------
 
Thanks Paul, but both computers have SP-1 and the Maxtor drive that Windows
"My Computer" cannot find is an 80 GB drive. When I used to service
computers, I commonly used a data drive to connect to an IDE port and
transfer files, but must have lost my touch!
Click to expand...


Did you go to CONTROL PANEL, ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS , COMPUTER MANAGEMENT ,
then create a partition and format?
 
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