My sata hard drive does not appear in Vista

[Mike]

I have 3 internal hard drives. One is the 'C' drive. Then I have a 'D' drive
for storage. Then I have 'L' drive which contains my MS games, ie Train Sim
And Flight Sim. And lets add an external HD 'K' which contains private
storage. All of these drives were visible when I was using XP Pro. I
installed Vista the other day off a DVD-/+RW which is a Sata drive and had no
problems.
Now my drive 'L' is no where to be found. I checked with Computer Management
and it still doesn't show. I updated the drivers for the ASUS motherboard,
still a no show. What can I do here? There is way too much special info on
that drive to fool around with reformating.
Please help me find an answer. Thank you all!

Mike

 

[Seidell23231]

Mike I would try the logical choice method. Open up your system and double
check all of your wireing. Make sure your power plugs are all seated well
and all wires in and seated as well. If that is a go, try unpluging your
second internal drive and plugging in the drive you are having problems with.
Use the same wires and plug from the one you unplugged. Start up and see if
it shows up. If it does, come on back and we'll go from there!

Good Luck ~~ Gunny

 

[Bob F.]

I have 3 internal hard drives. One is the 'C' drive. Then I have a 'D'
drive
for storage. Then I have 'L' drive which contains my MS games, ie Train
Sim
And Flight Sim. And lets add an external HD 'K' which contains private
storage. All of these drives were visible when I was using XP Pro. I
installed Vista the other day off a DVD-/+RW which is a Sata drive and had
no
problems.
Now my drive 'L' is no where to be found. I checked with Computer
Management
and it still doesn't show. I updated the drivers for the ASUS motherboard,
still a no show. What can I do here? There is way too much special info on
that drive to fool around with reformating.
Please help me find an answer. Thank you all!

Mike

Ok, How many physical drives did you have when you started? Where these
all SATA drives? Were any of these RAID drives? How were they formatted,
that is to say, how were they partitioned? On big partition for each drive?
What manufacturer drives are these and do you have the "disk tools" for the
drives? You can get them from the respective manufacturers web sites.

 

[Bob F.]

Mike I would try the logical choice method. Open up your system and
double
check all of your wireing. Make sure your power plugs are all seated well
and all wires in and seated as well. If that is a go, try unpluging your
second internal drive and plugging in the drive you are having problems
with.
Use the same wires and plug from the one you unplugged. Start up and see
if
it shows up. If it does, come on back and we'll go from there!

I wouldn't do that yet. You do not want to add another variable into your
trouble shooting process unless it it necessary. If the drives were found
in your old OS, we'll find them in the new one.

 

[Mike]

Bob F,
I have 3 installed hard drives. The L is the only one that is sata, the
others are ata. They are all made by Maxtor. Here’s something I didn’t notice
before. I went into ‘Device Manager’ to get the name of the drives because I
forgot, and low and behold all 3 drives are listed! Why is it listed there
and not in ‘My Computer’?

Mike

 

[Bob F.]

Bob F,
I have 3 installed hard drives. The L is the only one that is sata, the
others are ata. They are all made by Maxtor. Here’s something I didn’t
notice
before. I went into ‘Device Manager’ to get the name of the drives because
I
forgot, and low and behold all 3 drives are listed! Why is it listed there
and not in ‘My Computer’?

Mike

That's good work Mike. The Device Manager will help you configure
(somewhat) drives before they are initialized and mounted. Then they will
show up in "My Computer" as part of the OS. Now you can deal with them.
You can initialize them and assign letters. When you do, they should mount
(appear in My Computer). Can you handle it from here?

 

[Mike]

Bob F,

I might need some help there. It still doesn't show up in the Computer
Management window.

Mike

 

[Bob F.]

Bob F,

I might need some help there. It still doesn't show up in the Computer
Management window.

Mike

Any data on these drive that you care about. I understand you found them in
the Device Manager but don't see them in the Disk Management section of the
Computer Manager. Is that the case? Do you have the Maxtor tools for the
disks? You might be able to mount them that way. Seagate bought Maxtor so
you can get the tools from that site.

BTW, the reference to ATA drives has changed these days. The term is now
ambiguous. They are either (Serial) SATA or (Parallel) PATA, also known as
IDE. Since SATA came about the new PATA nomenclature showed up. Same IDE
drive, just new name. SCSI drives seemed to have lost favor.

 

[Mike]

Bob F,

You wrote:
"I understand you found them in
the Device Manager but don't see them in the Disk Management section of the
Computer Manager". This is correct. I 'm going over to the site now. I have
way too much data that I can't replace on that drive. I can never seem to
keep up with all these name changes! It seems strange that it shows in one
place but not the other. Wish me luck!

Mike

Mike

 

[Bob F.]

Bob F,

You wrote:
"I understand you found them in
the Device Manager but don't see them in the Disk Management section of
the
Computer Manager". This is correct. I 'm going over to the site now. I
have
way too much data that I can't replace on that drive. I can never seem to
keep up with all these name changes! It seems strange that it shows in one
place but not the other. Wish me luck!

Mike

Mike

ok...good luck.

 

[Mike]

I couldn't do anything. The program wants me to delete everything on the
disc. I can't do that. I'm at a loss here.

Mike

 

[Bob F.]

I couldn't do anything. The program wants me to delete everything on the
disc. I can't do that. I'm at a loss here.

Mike

Can you put them back wherever you got them from, maybe get a backup
external drive from Best Buy in an enclosure, and save the files that way?
You didn't copy enough of the thread and I can't remember your situation
precisely. Also when you get them up in the old computer, in Disk Manager,
please notice how they are formatted, Basic or Dynamic. You should convert
them to Basic before installing in the new machine.

 

[Mike]

Bob F,

I think we lost each other in this thread. My problem in a nutshell is this;
I have 3 disc drives, the regular ‘C’ drive and 2 extra drives. The ‘C’ and 1
of the extra drives are IDE and the one that doesn’t show up is a SATA drive.
I ‘see’ the drive in Device Manager, but I can’t access it. It doesn’t show
up in My Computer either. When I run MaxBlast the drive appears there also.
It's marked as Dynamic.
I can’t just reformat it because there is a lot irreplaceable data on it.
I didn’t have any problem when on the same computer, I was running XP Pro.
Then I went over to Vista Home Prem and this is the only problem I have ran
into.
Now, I also have a DVD-/+RW on SATA which is what I used to install Vista.
Is my only solution to change out the HD, install a new one, then enclose
the HD into a case and make it an external HD and just copy the files over?
You have a great help and I’m hoping you can help me find out why this is
happening. I'll check back tomorrow, I forgot about Daylight Saving Time!

Mike

 

[Jane C]

Hello Mike,

If you are using Home Premium, then you will not be able to use a dynamic
drive. Dynamic drives are not supported in either of the Home Editions.

 

[NoStop]

Hello Mike,

If you are using Home Premium, then you will not be able to use a dynamic
drive. Dynamic drives are not supported in either of the Home Editions.

Shucks! Now she tells us!

Cheers.

--
What does Bill Gates use?
http://tinyurl.com/2zxhdl

Proprietary Software: a 20th Century software business model.

AlexB's abacus: http://www.poppystoys.co.uk/shop/baby-toys/caterpillar.jpg
The closest to "computing" that man should go.

Frank, hard at work on his Vista computer all day:
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/compost.htm

 

[Frank]

Jane C wrote:



Shucks! Now she tells us!

But [sic] we still are waiting for you to tell us if your butt-buddy
alias is sharing his sheep with you?
Frank

 

[Mike]

Jane C,

Now that's not good news. What do I do now? Can I make it an external drive?

Mike

 

[Bob F.]

Jane C,

Now that's not good news. What do I do now? Can I make it an external
drive?

Mike

First of all, take a look at these:

Basic and Dynamic Hard Drives.

See:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_10.htm
and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309044
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Disk_Manager

Then, consider you need to get back to your old configuration. Consolidate
and/or copy you data over to a common or new drive. Format you "old" drives
to Basic. Install them and then restore your data. This was easy to write
for me but believe me I know what you are going through...been there.

 

[Mike]

Bob F,

I have an idea, because I really don't want to go through the hassle of
going back to XP then back again. Can I take the hard drive out, put a new
one in and format it, then transfer all the data from the now external drive
to the new blank internal drive?

Mike

 

[Bob F.]

Bob F,

I have an idea, because I really don't want to go through the hassle of
going back to XP then back again. Can I take the hard drive out, put a new
one in and format it, then transfer all the data from the now external
drive
to the new blank internal drive?

Mike

Well, The first part is a good idea, but how are you going to mount and get
the data from your old drive(s)?