after temporarily swapping slave drives... XP doesn't recognize original slave drive

[jc]

I have two hard drives (#1 & #2) and wanted to take .jpgs off an old
(#3) hard drive.

What I did was replace my #2 slave hard drive with the old #3 drive.
Did a 'search' and removed all my old photos.

PROBLEM: now XP doesn't recognize the #2 drive after I swapped back to
the original configuration. Device Manager says it is WORKING
PROPERLY, but I get error messages when I try to access it. XP always
asks me to RE-FORMAT. Norton Utilities doesn't see the drive. It
won't defrag. Nothing.

I now know I should have use a 'safe' setting before I exchanged hard
drives.

Anyone know how to change my hard drive setting so XP will recognize
it??

JC, tampa

If you are still reading my ramblings then I thank you for your time
and patience.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Start/run diskmgmt.msc, do you see the drive here? Try rescanning. If you
don't see the drive at all, then open the box up and recheck power and
cabling connections, as one is probably loose.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[jc]

Let me try to make my situation clearer:

I turned my computer OFF and exchanged slave drives. Re=booted and
transfered data off the NEW slave drive. I then switched back to the
original configuration.

Now XP recognizes the original SLAVE drive (asks me to reformat) but
won't let me access the data => OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING HAS CHANGED.

On the MS website I found this: "Unplugging or ejecting a device that
supports safe removal without first using the Safe Removal application
to warn the system can cause data to be lost or your system to become
unstable"

Further reading mentioned 'cache writing'.

Anyone know how I can fix this problem?

Thank you, jc, tampa