Vista Can't See All Drives

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Guest

Here is my hardware setup:

AN8 Ultra motherobard
AMD 3800+ X2 processor
1 GB RAM
7800GT video card
DVD drive and separate DVD +/- RW
160GB IDE hard drive (2 partitions: 40 GB (named Vista) and 120 GB
(Vista_Data))
250GB SATA II hard drive (2 partitions: 50 GB (WinXP) and 200 GB (XP_Data))

I currently have XP Home installed on the SATA hard drive on the WinXP
partition. While in XP I can view all of my partitions and everything is
functioning correctly. I have recently installed Vista Home Premium on the
IDE hard drive on the Vista partition. After installation and I go into the
"Computer" to view the drives, I see 4 drive letters. The C: is "Vista", D:
is "Vista_Data", E: is "WinXP" and F: is "XP_Data". The problem is that I
cannot view anything on the XP_Data drive. I have looked all through the
properties and security settings and changed the permissions so that I have
full control on everything on the drive. I saw a status window as it scanned
through all of the files on that drive. When viewing in explorer, the drive
has size of 0 MB double-clicking opens nothing.

This is very strange in that I can read all data on all other partitions
just fine. I have read some strange behavior about SATA and Vista, but I can
view the first partition on the SATA drive, just not the 2nd partition. When
I boot back into Windows XP, all drives are viewable and behave correctly.
Any ideas?
 
Have you looked in device manager to see if anything is amiss?

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I did not. Any tips on what I should look for? I would imagine the Device
Manager would generally list hardware driver problems. Seeing as how I see
the two partitions on that drive, just one isn't able to be opened, I doubt
it is a hardware drive issue. But that is just a guess on my part.
 
Are your data drives formatted as a logical partition. The only time you
need a primary partition is for operating systems. If the data is on a
primary partition, and the partition is marked as hidden, you will see the
partition in drive management but you will not be able to access the drive
in explorer until it is unhidden.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Here is the breakdown (according to Vista installation) of the drives:

Disk 0 Partition 1 WinXP Primary
Disk 0 Partition 2 WinXP_Data Logical
Disk 1 Partition 1 Vista Primary
Disk 1 Partition 2 Vista_Data Logical

I cannot view the WinXP_Data drive. I get a message the drive is not
accessible and access denied. All other drives work fine.
 
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