Help! Slave Hard Drive shown as Foreign and won't display

[Guest]

The slave hard drive (NTFS) was working perfectly in my computer with Window
XP Pro and i have abouth 60 GB of data in it. After i reinstall the computer
with Window XP Home, this slave hard drive show in the BIOS and in the device
manager, but not in window explorer or my computer. I went into Drive
Management and saw the master hard drive as drive 0, then drive 1 (slave)
which it said "foreign" with no drive letter assigned to it. The device is
working properly. I tried right click on this drive, the only option the
computer gave were "convert and partition". But this way, i will lose all
the data i had on it.

Someone help please!!!

 

[Rich Barry]

Andrew, try it as Master on the Secondary IDE Channel.

 

[Guest]

Rich, currently i have a DVD Rom and a DVD Burner in the secondary IDE. so
you suggesting me to remove one of them and put it on the hard drive, then
set the HD as master?

 

[GHalleck]

Rich, currently i have a DVD Rom and a DVD Burner in the secondary IDE. so
you suggesting me to remove one of them and put it on the hard drive, then
set the HD as master?

Where was this hard drive with the 60 GB of data before? Was
it a slave on the primary IDE controller, where the XP Home is
now the Master? Make sure that these 2 drives are jumpered
properly. Next, take "ownership" of the drive with the data.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the quick replies.

Ghalleck, the hard drive with the 60 GB of data was set as a slave on the
primary IDE controller. The XP Pro was installed in a 80gb Master HD. All
jumper were set correctly because they were working perfectly in XP Pro.
When I bought the Seagate 200gb HD, it was installed and partitioned under
the XP Pro. I wanted to install back my authentic copy of XP Home. I booted
the computer using my DELL XP Home Reinstallation CD (came w/ Dell Desktop
when I purchased the computer), removed the partition in the master (80gb
one) HD, repartitioned it, then installed the XP Home into the master. I
never touch anything with the 200 gb HD (Slave). After i upgraded the new XP
Home with SP1 and SP 2, the slave showed up in BIOS as 200 gb, it showed up
in Device Manager, but not in My Computer, or Window Explorer. I went into
Drive Management and saw the master hard drive as drive 0 (healthy NTFS),
then drive 1 (slave) which it said "Foreign" with no drive letter assigned to
it. Checked the properties, "The device is working properly." I tried right
click on this drive, the only option the computer gave i think was like
"Convert to Basic" or something like that. But this way, i will lose all the
data i had on it.

I am not sure if I had this slave partitioned as Dynamic volumn under XP Pro
before. If I did, then XP Home will not be able to recognize this according
to MSFT website. Then it leaves me w/ another option. I can pull this slave
out, put it in my other computer that has XP Pro running, copy all my data to
master HD in this XP Pro computer, then convert this one to "basic" (if data
will not be lost) or just repartition it in the XP Home computer.

 

[Guest]

maybe i can buy an external HD case and hook up this slave thru USB ??

 

[GHalleck]

maybe i can buy an external HD case and hook up this slave thru USB ??

Still not sure what you are doing...just when did the Seagate
drive figure into things? In any event, I'd put the 60 GB drive
into the external HD case. Follow the instructions for how to
jumper it properly for use in the external case.

 

[Kerry Brown]

You're right. If the drive was changed to dynamic with XP Pro you won't be
able to use the drive with XP Home. It won't work as a USB drive either. You
have to hook the drive up to a computer running XP Pro, Windows server, or a
Vista version that works with dynamic drives. You'll have to import the
foreign drive in the disk management console then copy the data off of it.
Once you've got the data off put it back in the XP Home computer where you
can repartition and format it. You can't convert from dynamic to basic
without losing the data. There are third party programs that claim to do
this but you need to backup anyway in case something goes wrong. Once you
have a backup it's just as easy to reparation and format as convert the
drive.

 

[Guest]

Question:
I am having the same problems.
My laptop is still running XP Pro (new desktop is now XP Home). If I buy a
case so I can USB the dynamic drive to the laptop, can I use the network
connection to transfer files since my laptop HD does not have enough room for
the drive that is being listed as "foreign"?

 

[Kerry Brown]

You'd have to try it and see. I have never tried a dynamic drive in an
external USB case and can't find any references as to whether it will work
or not. If The laptop with XP Pro can see and use the drive in a USB case
then yes you could share it and transfer data to XP Home that way.