XP won't recognise FAT 32 drive

[mickle]

I have just rebuilt a PC for a friend (well, he was before we rebuilt).
We installed a new WD drive as the master (jumper 5&6 selected on a 40
wire ribbon cable), and the WD drive from his old Win 98 PC as slave
(jumper 7&8 select), both on the primary IDE controller. I checked the
jumper settings on the WD site.

We installed a new version of XP SP2 on the new master drive (C,
letting the setup format the new drive on the way.

When the restart had been done, explorer reports a C: drive, no D:
drive, and the CD and DVD drives as E: and F:. The second drive is not
available. The BIOS identifies it correctly as slave on IDE 1.

I have looked in disk management, and it shows the second drive as a
basic, FAT32 drive, healthy and active, but with no drive letter
assigned. Right click on the drive, and the menu is greyed out except
for "Delete partition" and "help", so I can't access the folders on the
drive. The schematic in the lower pane shows the drive with blue
diagonal lines across the white space.

I have looked at the drive letter list in Tweak UI, and drive letter D:
is shown as enabled (the box is ticked). Can anyone help? This drive
has all the old data on it.

Thanks

 

[Jerry]

Go to the WD web site and download their software for testing and setting up
hard drives and try again.

 

[GreenieLeBrun]

I have just rebuilt a PC for a friend (well, he was before we rebuilt).
We installed a new WD drive as the master (jumper 5&6 selected on a 40
wire ribbon cable), and the WD drive from his old Win 98 PC as slave
(jumper 7&8 select), both on the primary IDE controller. I checked the
jumper settings on the WD site.

We installed a new version of XP SP2 on the new master drive (C,
letting the setup format the new drive on the way.

When the restart had been done, explorer reports a C: drive, no D:
drive, and the CD and DVD drives as E: and F:. The second drive is not
available. The BIOS identifies it correctly as slave on IDE 1.

I have looked in disk management, and it shows the second drive as a
basic, FAT32 drive, healthy and active, but with no drive letter
assigned. Right click on the drive, and the menu is greyed out except
for "Delete partition" and "help", so I can't access the folders on the
drive. The schematic in the lower pane shows the drive with blue
diagonal lines across the white space.

I have looked at the drive letter list in Tweak UI, and drive letter D:
is shown as enabled (the box is ticked). Can anyone help? This drive
has all the old data on it.

Thanks

Try putting the old drive on the secondary IDE channel as master, some
old drives do not play well with other drives.

 

[D.Currie]

I have just rebuilt a PC for a friend (well, he was before we rebuilt).
We installed a new WD drive as the master (jumper 5&6 selected on a 40
wire ribbon cable), and the WD drive from his old Win 98 PC as slave
(jumper 7&8 select), both on the primary IDE controller. I checked the
jumper settings on the WD site.

We installed a new version of XP SP2 on the new master drive (C,
letting the setup format the new drive on the way.

When the restart had been done, explorer reports a C: drive, no D:
drive, and the CD and DVD drives as E: and F:. The second drive is not
available. The BIOS identifies it correctly as slave on IDE 1.

I have looked in disk management, and it shows the second drive as a
basic, FAT32 drive, healthy and active, but with no drive letter
assigned. Right click on the drive, and the menu is greyed out except
for "Delete partition" and "help", so I can't access the folders on the
drive. The schematic in the lower pane shows the drive with blue
diagonal lines across the white space.

I have looked at the drive letter list in Tweak UI, and drive letter D:
is shown as enabled (the box is ticked). Can anyone help? This drive
has all the old data on it.

Thanks

In Disk Management, you need to initialize disk. Instead of clicking on the
part with the blue diagonal lines, click to the left of that in the square
box where it says Disk1 or Disk 2. You should get the option to initialize,
and then you'll get a drive letter.

 

[mickle]

Go to the WD web site and download their software for testing and setting up
hard drives and try again.

Jerry, Thanks for your help. I downloaded and ran the WD test software
(which found the drive and could access it, and it pronounced the drive
OK. I used the quick test and the full test. XP still won't allocate a
drive letter to the drive.

 

[mickle]

Thanks for your help. I did this, leaving the CD and DVD drive
unconnected, and removed the drive jumpers (the setting for single
drive on the cable). On reboot, the BIOS found the drive, but XP still
didn't have a drive letter, and didn't show the drive in Explorer.

 

[mickle]

Thanks for your help. I did this, but right clicking in the box to the
left of the one with the diagonal lines just gave me a menu with
"Properties" and "Help" in it.

I also tried using Diskpart from a DOS prompt, but it does not show the
drive either, so I couldn't use it to allocate one.

 

[Nepatsfan]

I have just rebuilt a PC for a friend (well, he was before
we rebuilt). We installed a new WD drive as the master
(jumper 5&6 selected on a 40 wire ribbon cable), and the WD
drive from his old Win 98 PC as slave (jumper 7&8 select),
both on the primary IDE controller. I checked the jumper
settings on the WD site.

We installed a new version of XP SP2 on the new master drive
(C, letting the setup format the new drive on the way.

When the restart had been done, explorer reports a C: drive,
no D: drive, and the CD and DVD drives as E: and F:. The
second drive is not available. The BIOS identifies it
correctly as slave on IDE 1.

I have looked in disk management, and it shows the second
drive as a basic, FAT32 drive, healthy and active, but with
no drive letter assigned. Right click on the drive, and the
menu is greyed out except for "Delete partition" and "help",
so I can't access the folders on the drive. The schematic in
the lower pane shows the drive with blue diagonal lines
across the white space.

I have looked at the drive letter list in Tweak UI, and
drive letter D: is shown as enabled (the box is ticked). Can
anyone help? This drive has all the old data on it.

Thanks

Go back and check the jumper settings on the slave drive. You
may find that you're supposed to have it set to pins 3 & 4.
That's the second set in from the power connection.

If you still think you've got it jumpered correctly post back
with the model numbers from both hard drives. The model numbers
should be displayed on the top of each drive.

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you use the 80 pin cable that
came with the new HD, put the master on the end the slave in
the middle and set both jumpers to cable select?

Nepatsfan

 

[mickle]

Nepatsfan, thanks for your help. I have checked the jumper settings,
and I got the numbers of the slave wrong, not the jumpers (comes of
learning to count left to right, not right to left). I am using the 80
pin cable. I have now tried setting both drives to cable select (pins 1
& 2) on the 80 pin cable, and the result is the same. Could this have
anything to do with the slave being a primary partition, having been
the only drive in a Win 98SE system?

The drives are a WD1600BB-00GUA0 (master) and a WD205BA-53AGA0 (slave).
The 205BB is dated 10th June 2000.

 

[Chris Priede]

Hi,

The second drive is not available. The BIOS
identifies it correctly as slave on IDE 1.

Was the old drive, by any chance, originally installed with a BIOS overlay
(such as "EZ-Drive" or Ontrack's "Disk Manager")? Put it back in the old
computer and boot from it, and you should see some messages from those
products before Windows starts, if they are present.

If there is an overlay present, it will only work with the same overlay
software installed on the new computer. Finding an XP-compatible version
might be difficult, and I wouldn't recommend this, anyway -- consider
transfering the old files by some other means (perhaps network or an
intermediate copy to another drive).

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Mickle

Whether you use 40pin cable or 80, it makes zero difference to the jumper
setting.. check your jumpers against the diagrams on this website..

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...Xh0PWp1bXBlciBzZXR0aW5ncw**&p_li=&p_topview=1

You might also want to try replacing the IDE cable with another..