Primary Slave Hard Disk Drive not found in Windows XP

[drosile]

Hello, everyone.

I recently came into possession of an old Maxtor 80GB hard drive, and
I thought I'd throw it in my computer for the extra storage.

I checked the jumpers, plugged it in, and booted my computer. The
drive showed fine in the BIOS, so I continued into Windows. The disk,
however, didn't show up at all in Windows--not in My Computer, Device
Manager, or Disk Management.

After messing about for a bit, I used my Ultimate Boot CD (basically a
Windows XP bootable CD) to try to find the drive. Immediately, the
drive (and its then four partitions) were found. I backed up the
500MB or so of data, then entered Disk Management (still on the boot
CD) and deleted all the partitions. I made one large partition on the
drive, and formatted it in NTFS. I rebooted back into Windows, and
the disk still does not appear.

I can go back and forth as much as I want between the boot CD and
Windows, but I simply cannot get this hard drive to show itself in
Windows.

Thank you for any suggestions.

-Dave

 

[Rich Barry]

Have you tried Cable Select instead of Slave on the drive jumper?

 

[drosile]

I just tried the Cable Select with the same results as above. If it
helps, the master drive is a WDC WD1200JB

 

[Andy]

Does the Western Digital drive have a jumper (Master with slave
present or CS) on it?

 

[drosile]

The Western Digital has the jumper set for "Master with slave
present." Should I change this to CS also?

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

The Western Digital has the jumper set for "Master with slave
present." Should I change this to CS also?

Is that Maxtor set to CS? Why not to slave?

 

[Noncompliant]

There's more than one issue here.

If you're using CS, both ide drives have to use that jumper selection. If
using master/slave jumpers, both drive has to use that.

The WD drive has a jumper selection for master w/ slave. You have to use
that if a slave is added using the slave jumper selection on the slave drive
on the same ide ribbon cable.

There were known issues with WD and Maxtor drives on the same ide ribbon
cable. In some cases, could be a problem even be on different ide ports and
consequently different ide ribbon cables. The issue was at the hardware
level on how the different manufacturers used to communicate ide
information. Not fixable with any amount of software, or tweaking.

 

[Anna]

There's more than one issue here.

If you're using CS, both ide drives have to use that jumper selection. If
using master/slave jumpers, both drive has to use that.

The WD drive has a jumper selection for master w/ slave. You have to use
that if a slave is added using the slave jumper selection on the slave
drive on the same ide ribbon cable.

There were known issues with WD and Maxtor drives on the same ide ribbon
cable. In some cases, could be a problem even be on different ide ports
and consequently different ide ribbon cables. The issue was at the
hardware level on how the different manufacturers used to communicate ide
information. Not fixable with any amount of software, or tweaking.

drosile:
1. Start from the beginning. Disconnect the WD from the system and boot only
to your boot drive. We'll assume it boots without incident and functions
without any problems, right? Confirm that the *ONLY* problem you're
experiencing in your system is the non-recognition of that WD secondary HDD.

2. Disconnecting any other storage devices including your optical drive(s),
and setting aside your "Ultimate Boot CD", boot into Windows with the WD
drive connected. Make absolutely certain you've correctly connected &
configured that drive depending upon what IDE channel it's connected to and
its position as Master or Slave. I assume you're familiar with WD's Single
setting (non-jumpered).

2. Is the HDD listed in Device Manager? If not, right-click on the "Disk
drives" listing and click the "Scan for hardware changes" option. Now
detected?

3. Access Disk Management. Is the drive listed there? If so, but no drive
letter, can you assign one?

4, If still no go, shut down and reconnect the WD on another IDE channel, or
if on the same IDE channel change its Master/Slave designation. Try it even
as Master on the Primary IDE channel with your boot drive connected as
Master on the Secondary IDE channel. Again, make *absolutely* sure you've
connected & configured the WD correctly.

5. Have you checked out the HDD with WD's diagnostic? I know you've
indicated the drive has been previously recognized by your boot CD, but if
you haven't checked out the drive, do so.
Anna

 

[drosile]

Well, I couldn't solve my problem, after all.

I swapped the two hard drives today, and installed Windows on the
Maxtor (80GB). I booted into the operating system, and it worked
fine. I could see the 120 GB hard drive as drive F: and I could
retrieve files from it. I switched the hard drives back, and again,
the Maxtor seemingly disappeared.

I decided it was time for a fresh install, anyway, so I am now running
my Windows installation from the Maxtor 80GB, with my WD 120GB hard
drive as a slave drive. Thanks for your suggestions, everyone.

-Dave