I just wiped my computer clean of ME and installed XP. My second hard drive is showing in the bios and is shown in the device manager as working properly. But when I go into "my computer" I can only see and access the primary drive. I've gone into the administrator and computer management section with it showing both drives but the secondary drive has no drive letter associated with it and I can't seem to give it one. I have alot of important programs and information otherwise it wouldn't be an issue. What the hell can I do. PLEASE someone help me with this problem!!!!!! ThANK YOU in advance!
My master or primary HDD is a 80Gig Maxtor and the secondary or slave HDD is a 20Gif Seagate. It is evident that the system knows ir's attached and still has my info and programs but no matter what I do it won't appear!
Jeph2k3, I think what EYEshurt is tring to say is the one drive (c that you can see with WinXP might be the sum total of both drives. So see if it is around 96GB. I didn`t think XP would do that, but I have never tried it so I guess its possible. What I would try is remove the drive. Then reboot and see if the thing still boots up. open a coulple programs and make sure things are good. Then Shut down, and restall the drive. Then boot up and see if its detected and if its given a new drive letter. But what EYEshurt mentioned might be what has happened.
If all is attached and set to master and slave correctly you can do the following in windows xp. 1.Go in to the control panel. 2.Click on Administrative tools. 3.Click on Storage. 4.Click on disk managemnet Local 5.All drives attached will show formated or not.Right click on the drive not formatted and select the option format. One thing though make sure the drive not formatted is showing the right capacity.If not use a diagnostic floppy set up disk you can download form the makers of your drive. John179
I appreciate the replies, but are either of you reading what I am saying correctly? I have been asked questions that are answered in my posts. The drive is formatted and has information from the last OS that I had on my system. It IS in the bios, it IS in the Device manager as "working properly. But I CANNOT access it from my computer nor can I access the add or change letter drive from the device manager.
The drive then has been put im but is not correctly formatted to your OS but is showing formatted.If this is what you are saying i have done this myself.If you have 2 drives on 1 ide lead and you re format 1 of your drives and put your OS on.The other drive will show up in your drive as formatted i know.You will not be able to get in to this drive until it has been re formated to your OS system.I would recomend you re format this dive and set it up through a diagnostic tool from the makers of the drive.You see windows will have picked up the drive and give it a letter like d: drive or what ever but it will not have been configure correctly to your OS.Each time you go in to my computer you can see the drive but when you try to click in you be be denied access until you put it right. John179
Well Jeph2k3 have you tried what I sugested. Remove the drive, and readd it. If is possible when installing the drive WinXp screwed up. IF you remove it reboot and install it back then Winxp will need to rediscover it. See if that works. The other posible thing to do is connect the drive as an external drive, recover all the data and then format it to WinXp format.
I have tried removing it through device manager and rebooting the PC with no different result. I have not tried physically removing it and re-installing it. It does mot even appear when I go into "My Computer", only the Primary Master (C drive displays. And in "computer management" the only option I get while right clicking on it is to delete the partition. So, how do I go about doing what you said externally? If worse comes to worse I will just delete the partition and reformat the damn thing and take the loss...........which will suck cause I will have lost a ton of good movies that I never had a chance to back-up to DvD! Again, I appreciate all of the help. I really can't believe with all these forum members and administrators that only 2 people are nice enough or know how to help me!?
To make the drive an external one, you would need to buy an external exclosure. These allow for connecting internal drives to a USB2 or Firewire connection to you pC. Making the drive external, WinXP will configure it as a removeable drive and will try to look for files. So that way you will not lose you data, but will cost around $50. I would first try to physically remove and add back. It is really easy to do and cost nothing but time. Do you have an other Computer by any chance? to this you could add this harddrive and recover the drive.
Thanks john179, I was having the same sort of problem as this guy i.e I installed the 2nd HDD but in "my computer" I could only see the C:/. But in Hardware tab of "system" It would read that 2 HDD were installed. Well when I did as you said it popped right up there as the F:/ it would not allow me to access it until I fully fomratted it though. so I think you were right. Thansk again.
