XP Pro doesn't see drive properly, though the drive works on another computer

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boris

Have a total of three drives. The main one is working fine. Just
installed XP Pro after a problem with the old system drive forced me
to replace it. Have two other drives which are hooked up, seen by XP,
but only one of them is being recognized as it is supposed to be in
Disk Management. The one that is correct shows its single partition,
and all the columns of information are populated properly. The one
that is not showing up properly has no name to it (though before I
re-installed, it was named), no File System associated with it, and is
showing Free Space equal to Capacity (200Gb drive, 186 space). The
odd thing is that when I put the drive into another computer
(friend's, who has XP Home, in case it matters), it was read without
problem and all files are still there. So the data is definitely
still there.

Why is XP Pro having trouble figuring this out? The drive is a WD and
I have seen many threads that talk about similar, but not the same
problems.

Thanks much for any help.
 
Right-click on MY COMPUTER and select MANAGE.
Click on DISK MANAGEMENT and in the lower right-hand
window (gray shaded area), right-click on your second drive
and select INITIALIZE DISK.

If that does not work:

Go to Start > Run and type: CMD , and hit enter.
In the Command Prompt window, type: DISKPART , hit enter.
Then type: RESCAN , hit enter.
Try initializing the disk again.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


| Have a total of three drives. The main one is working fine. Just
| installed XP Pro after a problem with the old system drive forced me
| to replace it. Have two other drives which are hooked up, seen by XP,
| but only one of them is being recognized as it is supposed to be in
| Disk Management. The one that is correct shows its single partition,
| and all the columns of information are populated properly. The one
| that is not showing up properly has no name to it (though before I
| re-installed, it was named), no File System associated with it, and is
| showing Free Space equal to Capacity (200Gb drive, 186 space). The
| odd thing is that when I put the drive into another computer
| (friend's, who has XP Home, in case it matters), it was read without
| problem and all files are still there. So the data is definitely
| still there.
|
| Why is XP Pro having trouble figuring this out? The drive is a WD and
| I have seen many threads that talk about similar, but not the same
| problems.
|
| Thanks much for any help.
 
Thanks much, Carey. Unfortunately, I don't have the option of
"Initialize" coming up anywhere in disk management (neither in the
bottom, nor up top). Since my first post, I have tried several
things. I was at the point where I realized that I had an error in my
device manager under "PCI Simple Communications Controller", which was
listed under "Other devices". This, I believe, is referring to the
same Promise Technology Ultra100 T2 IDE card that I have installed,
which is listed (I believe) as my SCSI & RAID Controller, which is
working fine (and is called Promise Technology). So I thought maybe
it was an issue with the card not being able to pick up both drives.
Went to their site, got the drivers, but then Windows wouldn't let me
load the driver at setup of yet another installation of the OS. Then
I figured that if it was a problem with the card and it was only able
to read one drive (maybe one of the ports was out or something),
simply unplugging the drive that WAS being recognized (out of the two
extra that I have) and leaving the one that WAS NOT being recognized
should yield at least a solution that shows me the one drive I was
having problems with. To no avail. I now have it installed, and the
problem drive, though it is the only one on the card at this time, is
stills being shown in the same light as was originally reported. So
now I am wondering what it could be about the drive itself that
suddenly is not being recognized. Could there be a master/slave
problem? Or would the computer not even see it (not even show me the
drive) if that was the problem.

As you can probably tell, my knowledge is piecemeal and limited
(mainly from friends), so your advice is still very appreciated and
valuable.

Thanks.
 
One more thing...to make it clear, I tried both approaches (first
seeing if I could initialize it, then the command prompt)...neither
ended up giving me the option of initializing. Hopefully, by
intializing, you didn't mean formatting. The drive does contain very
valuable data, which to the best of my knowledge is still there (since
I saw it on another box just yesterday).
Also, it's odd, but when I select properties for the drive, it just
gives me the System window (device manager, etc).
Final thought (don't know if it's relevant). The drive is listed
under device manager as a properly working device, but it is called a
SCSI Disk Device (with the WD numbering and all). I am positive,
however, that this is not a SCSI device, if I understand what that
means. This is an ATA-100 drive. Is the SCSI designation coming as a
result of the PCI card. And if so, is that possibly relevant to the
problem? Just trying to share what I know.

Thanks much.
 
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