Unable to see hard drive in my computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Squires Jr
  • Start date Start date
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Bob Squires Jr

I have run into this problem several times.
When the first hard drive is partitioned as a primary and
all others partitioned as secondaries, the system works
fine. All drives are available. Now, if a second hard
drive is partitioned ALSO as a primary and formatted, it
can be used as normal but if XP is re-installed or the
drive is moved to another XP machine... the drive shows up
in Administrative Tools / Disk Management but will not
assign a drive letter nor can it be seen under any other
circumstances. Win 98 used to make primary 1 drive C and
primary 2 drive D. XP will not allow you to see this drive
at all. Is there a fix for this??
 
-----Original Message-----
I have run into this problem several times.
When the first hard drive is partitioned as a primary and
all others partitioned as secondaries, the system works
fine. All drives are available. Now, if a second hard
drive is partitioned ALSO as a primary and formatted, it
can be used as normal but if XP is re-installed or the
drive is moved to another XP machine... the drive shows up
in Administrative Tools / Disk Management but will not
assign a drive letter nor can it be seen under any other
circumstances. Win 98 used to make primary 1 drive C and
primary 2 drive D. XP will not allow you to see this drive
at all. Is there a fix for this??
.
By primary and secondary do you mean IDE master and
Click to expand...
slave that is normally set by jumpers on the hard drives?
 
-----Original Message-----

slave that is normally set by jumpers on the hard drives?
.
Click to expand...


No, I mean Primary and Secondary PARTITIONS, NOT master /
slave as in drive selection. Having 2 MASTERS or SLAVES on
the same IDE bus would not allow the BIOS to read one or
the other thus Win XP wouldn't see it either.
This is a problem with having 2 seperate drives no matter
what bus or what selection on the bus... if you have 2
drives with PRIMARY PARTITIONS... XP will not see the
second drive. It will only allow you to create a dynamic
disk which of course will delete everything you have
stored on the drive prior to that.
If you partition the second hard drive as a primary and it
is blank, you can use it but once it has data and is
placed in another XP unit or XP is re-installed... the
drive shows up in Admin Tools but will not allow you to
assign a drive letter. It will only let you create a
dynamic disk. 95, 98 and ME do not do this. You can't
retreive the info on the drive using a 95, 98 or ME
machine because the drives are formatted in NTFS.
 
-----Original Message-----



No, I mean Primary and Secondary PARTITIONS, NOT master /
slave as in drive selection. Having 2 MASTERS or SLAVES on
the same IDE bus would not allow the BIOS to read one or
the other thus Win XP wouldn't see it either.
This is a problem with having 2 seperate drives no matter
what bus or what selection on the bus... if you have 2
drives with PRIMARY PARTITIONS... XP will not see the
second drive. It will only allow you to create a dynamic
disk which of course will delete everything you have
stored on the drive prior to that.
If you partition the second hard drive as a primary and it
is blank, you can use it but once it has data and is
placed in another XP unit or XP is re-installed... the
drive shows up in Admin Tools but will not allow you to
assign a drive letter. It will only let you create a
dynamic disk. 95, 98 and ME do not do this. You can't
retreive the info on the drive using a 95, 98 or ME
machine because the drives are formatted in NTFS.
.
Thanks for the clarification. I have learned
Click to expand...
something. Unfortunately, I haven't learned how to help
you. Are primary partitions always suppose to contain
the OS and be the boot disk? If so, how can Windows XP
support booting from multiple OSes? Could your problem
be that your second primary partition doesn't include an
OS? I'm just guessing. Feel free to diss me if I'm
wasting everyone's time.
 
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