Using my old WMe drive as my new secondary data drive?

[Guest]

My 'explorer.exe' was corrupted on my primary drive that had WMe. Wanting to ensure my data was preserved, I bought another HD, installed it as primary and installed XP.

I installed my old drive as the slave with the intent of bringing over all of my historical data to the primary drive.

XP recognized my old drive, and it says that it is operating normally.

My problem: there is no letter assigned and the HD icon does not appear on 'My Computer'. The disk management utility is not allowing me to assign a letter to my old drive, even when logged in as Administrator.

I am wondering if it is because my data drive has the boot record (when I was using it in my WMe instance).

I want to get my data off this drive and then reformat the drive... any suggestions?

 

[Mario]

Hi Quatto,

No. Boot record on data drive would not cause such issue.

You say that XP recognized your drive, and it's operating normally. I dont
think so.
You should not need to assign a letter into your disk, nor even do any
configuration.
Hard disks are plug-and-play. That's it. The more you try to configure the
worst.
Just take a look at Control Panel Device Manager to see if there are drivers
problems.

Double check drive jumpers (IDE Master/Slave stuff) and connectors.
Try with another IDE cable; and test another configuration, for instance
that trouble hard disk to the secondary IDE channel.
Enter BIOS and check if there is something wrong (eg. not Auto detection, or
disabled channel).
Do you have many drives, PCI cards, and a weak power supply?
Make a test. Remove your primary disk and boot with the other. Works or not?
Make another test. Try that old disk on another computer. Works or not?

I would bother about an old troublemaker hard drive... trash it asap!!!
Sooner or later it would fail miserably and dump my files. If you need more
space, buy another hard drive.

Regards,
Mario

My 'explorer.exe' was corrupted on my primary drive that had WMe. Wanting

to ensure my data was preserved, I bought another HD, installed it as
primary and installed XP.

I installed my old drive as the slave with the intent of bringing over all

of my historical data to the primary drive.

XP recognized my old drive, and it says that it is operating normally.

My problem: there is no letter assigned and the HD icon does not appear on

'My Computer'. The disk management utility is not allowing me to assign a
letter to my old drive, even when logged in as Administrator.

I am wondering if it is because my data drive has the boot record (when I

was using it in my WMe instance).

 

[Guest]

Mario - some additional info might help...

- XP sees the drive and when I go to reload the drivers it says that it is operating normally.
- My driver jumpers are both set to cable select. Both drives have worked in either slot. In the past, I have run with 2 hard drives successfully.
- The BIOS shows that my secondary drive has been detected in the slave position.
- The old hard drive boots with my current computer...

My challenge is that I need to get my data off that drive... it is odd that XP sees my drive but won't let me assign a letter to it... any other ideas?
--
Thanks in advance,
Marc

Hi Quatto,

No. Boot record on data drive would not cause such issue.

You say that XP recognized your drive, and it's operating normally. I dont
think so.
You should not need to assign a letter into your disk, nor even do any
configuration.
Hard disks are plug-and-play. That's it. The more you try to configure the
worst.
Just take a look at Control Panel Device Manager to see if there are drivers
problems.

Double check drive jumpers (IDE Master/Slave stuff) and connectors.
Try with another IDE cable; and test another configuration, for instance
that trouble hard disk to the secondary IDE channel.
Enter BIOS and check if there is something wrong (eg. not Auto detection, or
disabled channel).
Do you have many drives, PCI cards, and a weak power supply?
Make a test. Remove your primary disk and boot with the other. Works or not?
Make another test. Try that old disk on another computer. Works or not?

I would bother about an old troublemaker hard drive... trash it asap!!!
Sooner or later it would fail miserably and dump my files. If you need more
space, buy another hard drive.

Regards,
Mario

My 'explorer.exe' was corrupted on my primary drive that had WMe. Wanting

to ensure my data was preserved, I bought another HD, installed it as
primary and installed XP.

I installed my old drive as the slave with the intent of bringing over all

of my historical data to the primary drive.

XP recognized my old drive, and it says that it is operating normally.

My problem: there is no letter assigned and the HD icon does not appear on

'My Computer'. The disk management utility is not allowing me to assign a
letter to my old drive, even when logged in as Administrator.

I am wondering if it is because my data drive has the boot record (when I

was using it in my WMe instance).

 

[Guest]

Mario - some additional info might help...

- XP sees the drive and when I go to reload the drivers it says that it is operating normally.
- My driver jumpers are both set to cable select. Both drives have worked in either slot. In the past, I have run with 2 hard drives successfully.
- The BIOS shows that my secondary drive has been detected in the slave position.
- The old hard drive boots with my current computer...

My challenge is that I need to get my data off that drive... it is odd that XP sees my drive but won't let me assign a letter to it... any other ideas?


--
Thanks in advance,
Marc

Hi Quatto,

No. Boot record on data drive would not cause such issue.

You say that XP recognized your drive, and it's operating normally. I dont
think so.
You should not need to assign a letter into your disk, nor even do any
configuration.
Hard disks are plug-and-play. That's it. The more you try to configure the
worst.
Just take a look at Control Panel Device Manager to see if there are drivers
problems.

Double check drive jumpers (IDE Master/Slave stuff) and connectors.
Try with another IDE cable; and test another configuration, for instance
that trouble hard disk to the secondary IDE channel.
Enter BIOS and check if there is something wrong (eg. not Auto detection, or
disabled channel).
Do you have many drives, PCI cards, and a weak power supply?
Make a test. Remove your primary disk and boot with the other. Works or not?
Make another test. Try that old disk on another computer. Works or not?

I would bother about an old troublemaker hard drive... trash it asap!!!
Sooner or later it would fail miserably and dump my files. If you need more
space, buy another hard drive.

Regards,
Mario

My 'explorer.exe' was corrupted on my primary drive that had WMe. Wanting

to ensure my data was preserved, I bought another HD, installed it as
primary and installed XP.

I installed my old drive as the slave with the intent of bringing over all

of my historical data to the primary drive.

XP recognized my old drive, and it says that it is operating normally.

My problem: there is no letter assigned and the HD icon does not appear on

'My Computer'. The disk management utility is not allowing me to assign a
letter to my old drive, even when logged in as Administrator.

I am wondering if it is because my data drive has the boot record (when I

was using it in my WMe instance).

 

[Alex Nichol]

XP recognized my old drive, and it says that it is operating normally.

My problem: there is no letter assigned and the HD icon does not appear on 'My Computer'. The disk management utility is not allowing me to assign a letter to my old drive, even when logged in as Administrator.

I am wondering if it is because my data drive has the boot record (when I was using it in my WMe instance).

It may be just that the letter is hidden in My Computer - for that Use
TweakUI - one of the XP Powertoys from (if you have installed XP SP1)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

If you have not installed SP1, the earlier version can be found at
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe

Once installed you will find it in Start - All Programs - Powertoys for
Windows XP, and on its My Computer - Drives page make sure all letters
are checked.

But it sounds more as if the partition has the 'Hidden' bit set in its
entry in the partition table. For that I would use BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial
which is all you would need)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

Boot the floppy, Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on
Partition work. Select the second hard drive HD1 on the left, which
will be the one in question, and in the middle pane highlight the
partition. Click Properties, if there is an UnHide button, click on
that

 

[Guest]

Thanks to all who replied... this is how I inadvertently got things working correctly. I ended up reinstalling XP as I had picked up some spyware that I could not shake loose.

My drive problems were repeatable. I could see that it recognized my old drive as the 'F' drive, but it still would not appear on the desktop. While playing around with the Disk Defrag utility, I decided to 'Analyze' my 'F' drive. Once I did this, my old drive magically appeared on the desktop.

The first thing I did was copy all of my data to my new drive.. everything works fine now.

Marc