Slave EIDE Drive Not Recognized by Windows XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Larry Lawson
  • Start date Start date
L

Larry Lawson

My system has two hard drives, one for the system, other
for data. I had to reinstall Win XP Pro due to faulty
motherboard. I formated the system drive but not the
other. The data drive is now recognized in the system
bios but not by Windows and I cannot access my data.

I have tried the drive on a second computer running WinXP
Pro to no avail. I have also used 'Diskpart' from the
command line; the drive and volume appears and can be
selected but I am not able to assign a drive letter.

Is there a way to have Windows recognize this drive and
assign a drive letter without formatting and destroying
my data?

Thanks for the help.
 
If the second drive is slave did you try cable select for both drives.
A different IDE Ribbon Cable. The
Second Drive as Master on the secondary ide channel ???
 
Rich -

Thanks for the reply. I have not tried any of the ideas
you suggested. I can do the 'Master on secondary IDE
channel' Please tell me more about 'cable select for
both drives.' I assume there is a jumper setting just
like for 'Master' and 'Slave.'

Which approach would you recommend first - cable select
or switch to 'Master' on secondary IDE channel?

Thanks - Larry
 
Have you tried looking at the drive in the Disk Management screen? Right
click My Computer, click Manage and then the storage folder.
 
Yes - I have looked in the Disk Management Screen. Drive
shows online and healthy but has no drive letter. The
only option given to me under properties is to delete
partition. That is what I am trying to avoid.
 
Larry, try Cable Select first. Set both drives to it. It's one of the
Jumper settings. M, S, CS master, slave,
cable select.
 
Rich -

I ended up calling Microsoft for support. Took close to
an hour but they did solve the problem. Had to edit the
registry and remove one item from one key. Never would
have found that one on my own.

Thanks for the help.

Larry
 
Larry said:
My system has two hard drives, one for the system, other
for data. I had to reinstall Win XP Pro due to faulty
motherboard. I formated the system drive but not the
other. The data drive is now recognized in the system
bios but not by Windows and I cannot access my data.

I have tried the drive on a second computer running WinXP
Pro to no avail. I have also used 'Diskpart' from the
command line; the drive and volume appears and can be
selected but I am not able to assign a drive letter.
Click to expand...

A possibility is that the 'hidden' bit has got set. Try BootIT NG,
from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional
trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

Boot the floppy, Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on
Partition work. Select the physical drive (HD1) on the left. Then if
the partition shows in the center pane, highlight it and take Properties
- if there is an Unhide button, use it. If the partition does not show
at all, click in 'Free space' and see if Undelete helps
 
Larry, thanks for the heads up. Maybe you can post here what item and key in
the Registry. Might help
someone else.
 
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