missing hard drive

[Montgomery Hounchell]

I am running WinXP home edition.
I have had it for the last few years.
I have two hard drives on one ide hook up. C: and D: drives.
I have two cd on my second ide hook up. E: and F: drives.

I have been running Win Xp for two years. I have always had my four
drives reconized.

I had to re-install Windows xp from the ground up for virus problems.
I had to format the c: drive.

I installed windows xp home edition and now windows does not reconize
my second hard drive. When I turn my system on it does show my second
drive in the bio prior to booting up. If I go into my bios the second
drive is listed there. But it is not in: my computer nor can I go to a
command promp and go to it.
Windows shows the one hard drive and the two cd drivers.

Can anyone tell me how to get windows to reconize my second hard
drive?

TIA for any response or help.

Monte

 

[Smokey]

First make sure the drive is formatted and partitioned in
NTFS format to make sure Win XP won't have any problems.
Once this is done, restart the computer and see if XP
detects it. ALso, check the device manager to see if it
has installed any secondary ide device drivers. It is
possible this driver may require drivers or could
possibly be bad. I have had plenty of cases in which a
drive would detect in the bios, but windows won't detect
them do to the drives not actually spinning up and
booting.

 

[Ron Sommer]

The drive does not have to be formatted to NTFS. Fat 32 will also work.
The CDs are being detected on the secondary ide controller, so the driver is
not a problem.

Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage,
Disk Management
See if the D: drive is being shown as unformatted space.
Also, Start, Control Panel, System, Hardware tab, Device Manager button,
Disk Drives.
See if the both drives are listed.
I sounds like the D: drive was formatted and not partitioned.

 

[Montgomery Hounchell]

The drive does not have to be formatted to NTFS. Fat 32 will also work.
The CDs are being detected on the secondary ide controller, so the driver is
not a problem.

Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage,
Disk Management
See if the D: drive is being shown as unformatted space.
Also, Start, Control Panel, System, Hardware tab, Device Manager button,
Disk Drives.
See if the both drives are listed.
I sounds like the D: drive was formatted and not partitioned.

I did as you suggested..
The second hard drive is listed in every place my C: drive is listed
only the second drive does NOT have a drive letter assigned to it .
The hardware device manager lists the drive but it is with out a drive
letter in front of it. The list shows my first drive as C: then the
two cd's as D: and E: but nothing is given to the second drive.
It lists the drive and gives the right size of the drive but it just
doesn't have a letter assigned too it.

I recall when I re-installed winxp (home version) that windows asked
me which hard drive I wanted to install windows too.. I chose C: of
course but after the installation no second drive Letter assigned to
it. This tells me that windows "saw" the drive but has decided to not
give it a drive letter...

I had this same hard ware set up for the past two years. I have this
same windows xp disk installed before ane it always reoconized the
second drive and I used that same drive as a storage unit without any
problems.

I have been trying to find out how to assign a letter to this drive in
the help files but as of yet I can not figure how to assign a drive a
letter without having a drive letter in the first place.

Still confused.

Monte

 

[Ron Sommer]

I did as you suggested..
The second hard drive is listed in every place my C: drive is listed
only the second drive does NOT have a drive letter assigned to it .
The hardware device manager lists the drive but it is with out a drive
letter in front of it. The list shows my first drive as C: then the
two cd's as D: and E: but nothing is given to the second drive.
It lists the drive and gives the right size of the drive but it just
doesn't have a letter assigned too it.

I recall when I re-installed winxp (home version) that windows asked
me which hard drive I wanted to install windows too.. I chose C: of
course but after the installation no second drive Letter assigned to
it. This tells me that windows "saw" the drive but has decided to not
give it a drive letter...

I had this same hard ware set up for the past two years. I have this
same windows xp disk installed before ane it always reoconized the
second drive and I used that same drive as a storage unit without any
problems.

I have been trying to find out how to assign a letter to this drive in
the help files but as of yet I can not figure how to assign a drive a
letter without having a drive letter in the first place.

Still confused.

Monte

Is the drive shown in disk management as unallocated space?

 

[Montgomery Hounchell]

Is the drive shown in disk management as unallocated space?

no.. the disk management states this:

Layout type file system status
Partition Basic NTFS Healthy Active

It shows the size of it, which is a 80 gig.. and it shows it has 72
free space on it.

It just doesn't have a drive letter assigned to it. and there isn't
anyway I can get to it. In windows or in a dos prompt..


Monte