Adding a second hard drive problem

G

Guest

Hi
I upgraded my pc by installing a second hard drive and made it an extended
partition and formatted. When booting up, BIOS recognizes the new partition
and the size and when I check by using FDISK I can see that the right letter
(E) has been allocated for it and everything looks ok but Windows doesn’t
find it at all.
Does anybody have any ideas why this is happening and how to fix it.
Thank you!
 
L

LVTravel

I am assuming your OS is Windows XP. Right click on My Computer then Left
click on Manage. When the Computer Management window opens click on Disk
Management.

Find the drive in the bottom window. A new hard drive should not have an
extended partition on it but should be a primary partition for the first
partition created and "drive letter" assigned. Any other partitions to
divide the drive should be created in the extended partition normally.

Since there is no data on the drive (correct?) right click on the drive
information and delete the drive letter and partition. Recreate by
partitioning the drive (right click and choose partition) and allow it to
format the drive (NTFS is preferred and FAT 32 is limited to 32 GB size).

To create partitions on XP machines and manage disk drives you should
generally only use the tools in XP (except to create a FAT 32 drive larger
than 32 GB). Of course there are exceptions if you want to change partition
sizes, etc. then you would need to use a specialty program like Partition
Magic.
 
G

Guest

Thanks for your reply, but my problem is that when I open Computer Management
and Disk managament there is no new drive to "play" with.First I partitioned
it as primary partition and formatted it and Windows could not find it so I
deleted it and partitioned as extended partition but Windows cannot find that
either.I have done all this by using FDISK.My problem is that during the POST
everything is ok,Master40gig,and slave 80gig but Windows cannot find the
80gig drive at all.
Both drives are in the same ribbon and master and slave jumbers are ok.
 
T

Trent©

Thanks for your reply, but my problem is that when I open Computer Management
and Disk managament there is no new drive to "play" with.First I partitioned
it as primary partition and formatted it and Windows could not find it so I
deleted it and partitioned as extended partition but Windows cannot find that
either.I have done all this by using FDISK.My problem is that during the POST
everything is ok,Master40gig,and slave 80gig but Windows cannot find the
80gig drive at all.
Both drives are in the same ribbon and master and slave jumbers are ok.
"LVTravel" wrote:

Can you see them both in the BIOS?

Do you have the boot drives set up as FAT32? How about the 2nd
drive.?


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!
 
L

LVTravel

I know you say that the jumpers are set correctly but please recheck them.
I have had problems with Windows not recognizing a drive but dos and the
bios recognizing them if the Master was incorrectly set.

As the drive does show in the bios, make sure that the jumper on the Master
drive (if it is a Western Digital drive) is set to Master with slave present
and the new drive is set for Slave. If both drives are set to cable select
or one of them is set that way and the other is not then you need to set the
jumpers as Master/Slave.

If all there is correct, temporarily disconnect the drive cables to the CD
drive/s, reset the jumper on the new drive to Master/single and hook up the
CD drive cable to the new hard drive and restart. Does Windows recognize
the drive now? If so, I would replace the 80 wire/40 pin connector on the
primary channel.

Let me know what happens.
 
G

Guest

Finally some progress!

Unfortunately I was busy doing other things , but now I got time again to
try to fix this problem.
I did like you said “temporarily disconnect the drive cables to the CD
drive/s, reset the jumper on the new drive to Master/single and hook up the
CD drive cable to the new hard drive and restart†and it worked. Now I can
see both drives and partitions (C,D,E,F). You said that I should replace the
80 wire/40 pin connector on the
primary channel so I tried by swapping the primary and secondary wires and
it still works but if I but the 80 gig drive in the same ribbon with 40gig it
won’t work and I still don’t understand why. I have checked and re checked
jumpers and everything should be ok.
 
L

LVTravel

I possibly made a slight mistake when I told you to hook up using the cable
going to the CD... (No harm will happen to computer or drive.) Most
manufacturer's use a 40 wire cable on the secondary channel for CD drives
since they can't make use of the "features" that the 80 wire cable provides.
The computer will find the drives OK and use them but not to their peak
efficiency.

Now, back to your problem..

If your computer can see the new drive on the secondary channel when set to
master, it should also be seen when on the primary channel as slave. I
still think that you may be having jumper problems on the primary channel.
What brand of drive is the Primary Master and what brand is the Primary
Slave?

If you have a Western Digital, Fujitsu and possibly other drive, it needs a
different jumper setting for Master with no slave present than it does for a
Master with slave present. It shows the different jumper configurations on
the top of the drive, but you would have to remove the drive from the
computer to see it.

If one drive happens to be set as CS (cable select) and the other is set as
Master or Slave you can also run into similar problems.

Let me know what happens..
 
G

Guest

I have one Floppy drive, one CD drive and one CD-RW Drive and two Hard Disks
40G Seagate and 80 G Western Digital.
The jumper settings was that the 40G master drive (Seagate) as “master or
single drive“ and the 80 slave (Western Digital) as “slave†.
I even bought a new 80 pin IDE cable but it made no difference. POST can see
the slave and names it the slave but windows can’t find it. Disk Management
can’t find the 80G drive at all. I put the 40g as master and then CD drive as
a slave in the primary channel and in the POST you can see them ok put
windows cannot find the CD Drive. In Disk Management you can’t see the CD
drive.
To me it look’s like I can only have Master Drive in the Primary Channel and
what ever I add on that Channel, Windows can’t find it. I tried RESCAN DISKS
in the Disk Management but nothing happens. At the moment I have on the
Primary Channel 40G HD as a Master and CD Drive as a Slave and Windows can
only find the HD not the CD Drive. On the Secondary Channel I have 80G HD as
a Master and CD-RW as a slave and Windows can find both of them.
Seagate has also a jumper setting called “Master with non ATA- compatible
Slave†but it didn’t work either. So I don’t know what to try next…
 
L

LVTravel

OK, lets try one more thing. When you turn on your computer, go into the
bios. This information is provided if you don't know how to get to the
bios. You will see on the screen to press either del, F1, F2 or some other
key or combination to get there just after the memory count has completed.
(some machines hide the bios boot information and only show a logo. Press
the Esc key immediately when the logo shows..

Once in the bios, locate the place where the IDE channels are displayed.
Make sure the Primary Slave is not disabled. It should be enabled and/or
set to Auto. What you described with the CD drive not being found is an
indication to me that the bios was shipped with the Primary Slave disabled.

Let me know what happens.
 
G

Guest

Primary Slave is enabled and I can see the CD-Drive details on Bios and
everything looks ok, all settings are set to auto, I can see my Primary
master and Slave and Secondery Master and Slave but when Windows starst it
can't find the Primary Slave.
 
W

wayne

common problem with an odd solution if you are using master slave on the
drives change to cable select. If using cable select change to M/S.
drives that work fine for a while then a small change will cause them to not
work until swapped have never seen anything that explained why?

Wayne
 
L

LVTravel

OK. Now I hope you currently have the two hard drives on Primary as Master
and the new drive as slave. Your 1 or 2 optical drives are on Secondary
Master & Slave.

When you start drive management (Right click My Computer, left click Manage,
left click Disk Management, first click Action tab and then Rescan disks.
After that look at the bottom right of the screen that should have Disk 0,
Disk 1, CD-ROM-0, etc. Do you see any reference to Disk 1 (Disk 0 will be
your primary Master and Disk 1 should be your Primary Slave but it may be a
USB drive.) A USB drives that has been attached to the computer may have
already taken a drive letter that you assigned to the new hard drive during
your DOS level partition and format (E: I believe you said earlier). If you
see any drive with drive letter E: you might try to change it to a different
letter and see if your hard drive appears.

Let me know what happens.
 
M

Miguel A.

This often has to do with the fact that the EIDE ribbon
has a slave and master on the same ribbon.

The correct placement, is the MASTER device (HDD) on the
far side of the ribbon, and the middle connect (2/3 distance)
is the SLAVE device (CD-ROM, for example).

Also, be sure to put the small device selectors in the back
of each device, correctly, to designate master/slave in
as appropriate.

There is no need for a Dynamic Drive Overlay on new motherboards
from the last few years, as the BIOS supports 80 gigs, and upwards.

Once the above is done, you will be able to add another hard drive,
CDROM device, and what not, and the full capacities will be shown
in the BIOS.

As well, a nice utility, like LifeGuard from WD, will allow
you to select XP as the OS you want to load, coupled with partitioning
the HDD as you like, with the file systems you want, exactly like
Disk Druid from Linux, or Partition Magic's tool, or even FDISK
from MS-DOS.

You can either bootup from the CDROM, directly (XP) or from an old
1.44 disk from windows 98, loading smartdrive and CD-ROM support
in your config.sys and autoexec.bat and be sure to have copied
smartdrive and also mscdex.exe on the 1.44 disk to be able to
launch the installation from the CD.

Myself, I have drivers from LG and Teac for mscdex support on 1.44
disks.
 
L

LVTravel

Uh, Miguel A., I don't think you meant to put this here. A different
discussion entirely.


Miguel A. said:
This often has to do with the fact that the EIDE ribbon
has a slave and master on the same ribbon.
snip
 
M

Miguel A.

Uh, LVTravel, I think you forgot to carry your umbrella with you
when leaving the house. It's raining outside, if you didn't notice.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top