Windows XP does not recognise 2nd hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Geoff
  • Start date Start date
G

Geoff

I am using Win XP and recently fitted a second hard drive. This was a fairly
old Seagate out of an old Win95 computer (that died). The objective of the
exercise was to be able to access old important data files. The primary hard
drive is fitted as a Master and the secondary as a Slave. BIOS Setup
recognises the slave hard drive (cylinders, heads, size etc) but Windows
does not! Where to now?
Thanks
 
Additional information:
The slave hard drive soes not show up in Devices. At boot up I can start
the computer (in Safe Mode) using the slave hard drive as it has a copy of
Windows 95 on it.
 
Have you tried going into Disk Management and seeing if it's there? If it
is, right click and assign a drive letter.
 
Hi: i am having the same problem. i'm using a new drive thats been
formatted via a mac for both windows and mac. if i go to disk management, it
wants me to initialize the disk. i have all my musi on this drive and dont
want to screw it up. windows help doesnt tell me what 'initialize' will
really do. will it affect the data on the drive? thanks
 
Geoff said:
Thanks Randy BUT it does not show up in Disk Management :-(
Click to expand...

Sorry Geoff but you got me there. I've installed dozens of slave drives in
various pc's with 98, ME and XP and have yet to have one not show up when I
go to Windows Explorer. If your drive shows up in the bios XP should see
it, in fact what usually happens is a bubble will show up in the lower right
hand corner saying XP is installing the new hardware. The typical problems
on this newsgroups are drives that show up in the bios and in device manager
but because XP didn't assign a drive letter they aren't seen and going into
disk management and assigning the drive letter usually fixes the problem. I
have never run into that problem.
If you using the master slave jumpering rather than cable select, make sure
you have no jumpers installed when used as a slave.
 
oh, damn.... :-(

I am using master slave jumpering and no jumper is being used on the slave
drive (in accordance with the diagrams on the drive).

Perhaps I shud put the "offending" drive into another, more up to date
machine and see if that works.
 
Good news is that I placed the "offending" hard drive in another more up to
date (hardware) machine and Win XP recognised it and I was able to save the
required data for the client.
Thanks for everyones help.
 
Geoff said:
Good news is that I placed the "offending" hard drive in another more up
to date (hardware) machine and Win XP recognised it and I was able to save
the required data for the client.
Thanks for everyones help.
Click to expand...

Now you got my curiosity, what is so different hardware wise between the 2
machines?
 
The "old" machine dates back probably about 6 years, Asus P3V133 m/b with
Award Medallion BIOS V6 (1999?), 32MB Ram, running Win95.

My machine is only about 30 mths old.
 
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