WD 120 GB HD recognized by BIOS but not by XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stephen Gallant
  • Start date Start date
S

Stephen Gallant

Hi all,
I am having problems with a WD 120 GB (model WD 1200BB) that
started a week ago with the drive letter not appearing always at
bootup even though it was reported by BIOS and by Device Manager. That
is, sometimes the drive letter and volume would be usable and
sometimes not. At that point I ran the diagnostic utilities (Data
Lifeguard 11.0) which showed no problem with the drive. However,
yesterday when I booted the PC, the same problem occured and on
running the utilities again I noticed two things
a) Data Lifeguard wanted to install the drive so that it could be used
by the system. I backed out of the install when I saw that this would
imply a disk format
b) The utility gave the WD disk the volume letter C:\ (strange but it
may not
mean anything ?)
I was not able to run any diagnostics. The disk is still recognized by
BIOS and Device Manager, and I can hear it spin up and spin down.
The disk has non-crucial data so I am willing to give formatting a
try, but I want to know if this is isolated to the disk or it portends
something more serious. I am also considering doing a RMA.
My system is running XP Pro, I have a 17 G Seagate (volumes C: and D:)
and a CD-ROM (volume E:).
Thanks in advance

-S
 
Hi, Stephen.

In WinXP (and in Win2K), the primary tool for dealing with HDs is Disk
Management. One way to start it is from the Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc

Disk Management is the tool we use to create and delete partitions and
logical drives, to assign "drive" letters, and to format volumes. It also
is used to "mount" and "initialize" drives, when needed.

Disk Management will tell you which HD is "Disk 0" currently. Of course,
that designation can change each time you boot, depending on your
configuration at the time. Perhaps you set your BIOS to boot from HDD-1,
rather than from HDD-0? Or you removed your 17 GB drive, or cabled it in
the Slave position. Or some other such configuration change, intentional or
not. "Drive" letters are not permanent, of course, but can change with each
reboot, and can be different in WinXP than in the BIOS assignment. Disk
Management can assign specific drive letters that will be persistent within
WinXP, but might be different in Data Lifeguard or any other such program -
even WinXP's Recovery Console may show different letters.

RC
 
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