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CANT FIND SECOND HDD IN WIN 98
- Thread starter CEOJarred
- Start date
rclarke250
Technical User
Is it formatted? until it is partitioned and formatted and assigned a drive letter, it won't be seen by win98. Go to bootdisk.com and download and create the win98 bootdisk, use fdisk to partition the second hdd, and then format it. You do not need to mark it active, as that is just if it will be used as the boot device.
- Thread starter
- #3
FDISK ONLY READS THE PRIMARY". If the BIOS finds it ok, then FDISK should find it also.
Do you see Option 5 in the FDISK Options menu?
This is a fairly dated machine by modern standards - what type and capacity of drive are you attaching to it?
I'm wondering if the BIOS is only capable of supporting small capacity drives, which is perhaps why you can't partition and format it.
Some drives have a 32Gb limit jumper - try enabling that and see if FDISK will then recognise it.
ROGER - G0AOZ.
Do you see Option 5 in the FDISK Options menu?
This is a fairly dated machine by modern standards - what type and capacity of drive are you attaching to it?
I'm wondering if the BIOS is only capable of supporting small capacity drives, which is perhaps why you can't partition and format it.
Some drives have a 32Gb limit jumper - try enabling that and see if FDISK will then recognise it.
ROGER - G0AOZ.
- Thread starter
- #5
Let's have some basic facts first...
1. Make and model of hard drive.
2. Capacity of drive.
3. What detail does the Dell BIOS show for this drive?
4. Does this drive work successfully when attached as a second HDD to an XP, Vista or W7 machine? In other words can you partition and format it NTFS, for example.
I take it you have functioning Windows 98 floppy boot disk with the correct version of FDISK on it?
ROGER - G0AOZ.
1. Make and model of hard drive.
2. Capacity of drive.
3. What detail does the Dell BIOS show for this drive?
4. Does this drive work successfully when attached as a second HDD to an XP, Vista or W7 machine? In other words can you partition and format it NTFS, for example.
I take it you have functioning Windows 98 floppy boot disk with the correct version of FDISK on it?
ROGER - G0AOZ.
"I take it you have functioning Windows 98 floppy boot disk with the correct version of FDISK on it?"
Iseem to recall that there was an upgrade to FDISK at some point in the 98 timeframe that allowed larger drives.
But no matter which version you are dealing with, FDISK should see the drive and give you the option 5 that Roger mentioned, then allow you to see the partition table with option 4, it just won't create a proper partition if it is the wrong one. IIRC the size limit is around 260mb on the bottom, but that discovery was a long time ago and I don't remember the details.
Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.
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