Can't Access slave Hard Drive on WinXP (1 Viewer)

[Dalton]

This is the second time this has happened to me with 2 different hard drives. I installed a 20GB HD as a slave to my 120GB drive. I have done this many times before with no problem(except a few months ago with a 40 gb drive i tried to install as a slave). Windows XP sees the drive and it shows up in the device manager but i can't access it through MY Computer or Windows Explorer. This is the second time i tried adding a slave HD and had this problem. What am i doing wrong? I set the jumper to slave, it shows up in the BIOS and device manager but nowhere else. The only thing i can think of is that i need to "activate" it or something in Windows XP. Anyone else ever have this problem?


Thanks,
Dalton

 

[Glenn]

Hi,

Is the hard drive formatted? If not that is probably your problem.

To format in XP, go to control panel, administrative tools, computer management, then disk manager.

Good luck,
Glenn

 

[Dalton]

Thanks for the reply Glen. Yes the drive is formatted(it still has files from my old system on it. When i go to disk manager it doesn't even see the drive. The funny thing is though that if i access Device Manager through Disk Management, Device Manager sees it but thats it. No access at all...nada. I'm stumped. I know it has something to do with XP because of the same thing happening before with the 40GB drive i tried to install as a slave.:frowning:

 

[Hanson]

Was your old system XP or Win98 (or ME)? XP won't recognize FAT32 formatted drives (unless you installed XP on FAT32). It will recognize FAT16 and NTFS.

 

[Dalton]

Yes the i believe the drive is FAT32. Why does Device Manager see it? Is there any way to formatt it?

Thanks,
Dalton

 

[Patrick Sun]

Have you tried assigning a drive letter to that drive in the Computer Management's disk management area?

 

[Hanson]

XP knows the drive is there, just as if you had an unformatted drive. But XP cannot read the contents because it is not NTFS or FAT16.

Here's some info on a windows conversion utility.

 

[Dalton]

Yes but it won't even let me format it because it doesn't show up under windows explorer or My Computer. Formatting is not an option available from Device Manager. Hopefully a solution will present itself. I suppose i could go through the hassle of hooking it up as a primary drive and boot with XP and then format it that way. I just don't think i should have to though.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

That's incorrect. XP will read FAT16, FAT32 and older versions of NTFS (from NT) quite happily. Whatever format is used to install XP is irrelevent.

The only FAT32 issue XP has is that it will not let you format a FAT32 partition larger than 32gb, but that's purely by design and it will quite happily read FAT32 partitions of any size if they already exist on the system.

The conversion to NTFS wont work because Windows isn't seeing the drive properly anyway.

Dalton, your IDE cable - make sure it's free of physical problems and is the 'correct' way around if it's an 80pin ATA66, 100 or 133 variety.

Jumper setting - I know you said you set it but go back and check it again. What is the jumper setting on the drive that was already in the system? If one is using hard master/slave and the other using cable select you can run into problems.

Finally, try the slave drive on the opposite IDE channel to the one you're attempting now.

 

[Dalton]

Thanks Rob,
I need to check if the master drive is set to cable select. I have tried everything else(except the other ide channel which has 2 devices hooked up already). If it isn't the jumper setting on the master then i will try IDE 2. Hopefully i will be successful.

Dalton