Slave Hard Drive/External Drives not Recognized in "My Computer"

[Guest]

Hi,
My system is as follows: IBM 8307 Netvista Pentium 4, 768MB Ram; 40GB hard
drive
I have tried to install a 120GB hard drive (Western Digital) as a slave
drive, BIOS, device mgr. both recognize the new HD. I went to disk management
and it is listed there as unallocated, but when i right-click to format or
create partition those options do not seem to be available. I checked that I
have the latest bios version.
Also, I tried a 20GB Firefly external USB and that is not visible in "my
computer" either, as you would expect when the USB device is connected.
Please help. I have browsed the forum and have seen some similar problems,
most are solved by formatting or partitioning, but the system does not give
me the option.
Thanks for your time.

 

[Keith]

Hi,
My system is as follows: IBM 8307 Netvista Pentium 4, 768MB Ram; 40GB hard
drive
I have tried to install a 120GB hard drive (Western Digital) as a slave
drive, BIOS, device mgr. both recognize the new HD. I went to disk
management
and it is listed there as unallocated, but when i right-click to format or
create partition those options do not seem to be available. I checked that
I
have the latest bios version.
Also, I tried a 20GB Firefly external USB and that is not visible in "my
computer" either, as you would expect when the USB device is connected.
Please help. I have browsed the forum and have seen some similar problems,
most are solved by formatting or partitioning, but the system does not
give
me the option.
Thanks for your time.

Do you have an option to initialize? .If so go there.

 

[Guest]

No, the right-click options were limited to change drive letter, properites,
format is greyed out, nothing about initailize.
Thanks

 

[Guest]

I gave up and brought it to a repair shop, all is well now, must've been a
corrupted XP installation because it's working fine.
Thanks

 

[Guest]

So what did the repair shop do. Do you know? I have this problem as well
except it's with both Windows XP and Windows 2000. What bios are you using
and the versioh? Do you know?

 

[Thief_]

It's a BIOS setup issue. My computer used to try to boot off mu external,
USB-connected HDD until I changed the BIOS setup.

 

[Kelly]

Do you have SP2 installed?

--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

 

[Guest]

As a matter of fact, it's SP1. Will this make a difference?

Kitty