Second Harddrive not recognized after windows 2000 install

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hein
  • Start date Start date
H

Hein

I have a Maxtor 80GB harddisk as my second (D:) drive. I
just installed windows 2000 (formerly had Windows 98, then
transferred personal data from C: to D:, deleted C: and
installed W2k on C:). The drive D: letter appears in the
explorer, when I right click onit I get all the options,
but when I left click on it it says: "The disk in drive D:
is not formatted. Do you want to format?".

There is a lot of important data on D: how can I safely
get it back?

Thanks so much for a quick reply!
 
Hi, Hein.

Remember that D: might not be D: any more!

Rather than rely on Windows Explorer, find the (new in Win2K) built-in
utility Disk Management. One way to find it is to Enter at the Run prompt:
diskmgmt.msc

Check out this new utility. Disk Management does all the things we used to
do with FDISK and Format.exe under MS-DOS, plus the drive letter assignments
that we did with Device Manager in Win9x/ME. Click View and arrange the
screen to suit yourself; I like the Volume List at the top and the Graphical
View at the bottom. Also, read the Help file from here; it explains lots of
things about hard drives, partitions, etc., that Windows users have been
wondering for years.

"Drive letters" actually are not assigned to hard drives, as you probably
know, but to primary partitions and to logical drives in extended
partitions. They really should be called "volume letters", but we're stuck
with tradition from back in the days when each physical drive had only a
single partition, I guess. Now, a single physical HD can have multiple
drive letters. Also, drive letters get assigned to CD/DVD drives, USB
"jump" or "thumb" or "flash" (or whatever you call them) drives.

Also, drive letters are not assigned permanently but get assigned anew each
time we boot. If we boot with two formatted HDs plugged in, the second one
probably will be D: and the CD drive will be E:. But if we then remove the
second HD and reboot, the CD drive will become D:. Then we plug in the
second HD again and it gets the D: letter again. But if we use Disk
Management to specifically assign letters, the Win2K will try to keep those
letters each time it reboots, even if the physical arrangement has changed.

Study what Disk Management is telling you about your current drive
configuration. Drive D: might not be the one that you expect it to be.

RC
 
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