using old 98 drive

[shane]

I bought a new hard drive to do a clean fresh xp install.
All was well. I then reconnected my old 98 system drive as
a slave in order to have it handy in case there was any
data on it that I suddenly remembered I needed. After
booting, the disk manager shows it as a healthy fat32
drive with the correct capacity, but it refuses to
allocate a drive letter and only offers a "delete
partition option" under actions.
Any ideas?

 

[Ron Martell]

I bought a new hard drive to do a clean fresh xp install.
All was well. I then reconnected my old 98 system drive as
a slave in order to have it handy in case there was any
data on it that I suddenly remembered I needed. After
booting, the disk manager shows it as a healthy fat32
drive with the correct capacity, but it refuses to
allocate a drive letter and only offers a "delete
partition option" under actions.
Any ideas?

When mixing hard drives of different makes and vintages I find it
advantageous to, at least initially, install the second drive as the
master drive on the secondary IDE channel rather than having the two
drives as master and slave on the same channel.

That eliminates any possible jumper related problems and also avoids
the occasional compatibility issues that can arise when using two
drives from different manufacturers and which are several years apart
in age.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."