New HDD installed but no drive letter assigned

  • Thread starter Thread starter Clive Granger
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Clive Granger

I've just installed a 20GB HDD as a primary slave to my 4GB Primary
Master. It is registered in CMOS and my Windows 98 Device Manager also sees
the drive. Problem is there is no drive letter assigned and the box where
the drive letter is shown is grayed out). Explorer ignores the drive as
well.
This is a pretty old system. AT motherboard (don't know the
make). Running an AMD K6.
Can someone help me get this new, huge (for me) diskdrive up and running?
I probably don't have to mention that I am new to this game.
Any help appreciated,
Clive.
 
Clive Granger said:
I've just installed a 20GB HDD as a primary slave to my 4GB Primary
Master. It is registered in CMOS and my Windows 98 Device Manager also sees
the drive. Problem is there is no drive letter assigned and the box where
the drive letter is shown is grayed out). Explorer ignores the drive as
well.
This is a pretty old system. AT motherboard (don't know the
make). Running an AMD K6.
Can someone help me get this new, huge (for me) diskdrive up and running?
I probably don't have to mention that I am new to this game.
Any help appreciated,
Clive.
Click to expand...

Have you formatted the disk?
 
I've just installed a 20GB HDD as a primary slave to my 4GB Primary
Master. It is registered in CMOS and my Windows 98 Device Manager also sees
the drive. Problem is there is no drive letter assigned and the box where
the drive letter is shown is grayed out). Explorer ignores the drive as
well.
This is a pretty old system. AT motherboard (don't know the
make). Running an AMD K6.
Can someone help me get this new, huge (for me) diskdrive up and running?
I probably don't have to mention that I am new to this game.
Any help appreciated,
Clive.
Click to expand...

First step, the hd needs to be partitioned. Run 'Fdisk' in a console
window to do this.
First change to the new hd as active drive, or you'll be ****in up
your current hd.
Check out 'show partition info' just to confirm there isn't any
partition.
If you want one single volume, it's easy. Just make a primary DOS
partition and assign all space to it.
Check out 'show partition info' just to confirm everything is ok. Exit
Fdisk.

Reboot.

Rightclick on your new drive and choose 'Format' in the menue.
It was a long time since I did anything FAT32, but I think you want
4096Kb allocation units. If there is any other options you feel
insecure about, ask here. Good luck.

P.S. If you want more than one partition on your new drive, the
process is a bit more involved. You still need to first make a primary
DOS partition. But don't make it any bigger than you want your first
partition. Then you make an extended partition and assign all
remaining space to it. You still don't have any other usable partition
than the primary. To get that, you have to make logic units inside the
extended partition. Like this:

New HD
D: Primary DOS 10GB
Extended(10GB)
{
E: Logic 10GB
}

Or like this:

New HD
D: Primary DOS 8GB
Extended(12GB)
{
E: logic 6GB
F: logic 6GB
}


ancra
 
AT system and the bios sees a 20gig drive? and it is using the full capacity? Thats a hurdle in itself.
you didnt mention the partitioning or formating of the drive
..
 
Drive won't get a letter(s) until it has been partitioned with FDISK. Then,
it can't be accessed until it has been formatted.
 
Doh! I hadn't FDISK'd the drive. Like I said, very new to this game..
Now FDISK'd and Formated.

Thanks to all for responding....
Clive.
 
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