HDD not showing in "My Computer" Need help quick

[neilntruong]

Hi, I am installing a new 160gb samsung hard disk as a slave drive on my system that is running windows 2000. My master hdd is a 20gb maxtor. The bios detects the drive just fine. Also, Device manager is able to detect the drive. I just cant see it in "my computer." I appreciate any ideas or suggestions. Thanks

 

[neilntruong]

Also in bios it only reads 32240 MB. Is my bios not able to support such a large drive? If so, i have a few other computers/servers that i can put the drive in and test but i dont want to do that just yet because the data on these servers are not backed up. And i dont want to take a chance on messing things up.

 

[wolluf]

sounds exactly like a bios restriction - is there a bios upgrade available for the mobo (though if there is it may only go up to 128/137GB). Could buy a PCI controller card.

 

[techkiwi]

Have you formatted it yet?

It's also possible that the drive has some jumpers on it that can alter how large the drive appears in order to work with all computers. It may pay to check all jumpers.

 

[neilntruong]

Thank you for all your suggestions. Yes i've formatted the 32GB. Dont know what i was thinking. I hope there still is a way for me to retrieve the remaining 128GB.

No jumpers. Only those for Master/slave.

 

[wolluf]

Once you've found machine which recognises whole drive, yiou can just remove 32GB & create new 160GB (or muliple partitions). And you're sure about the jumpers (some have a limiting jumper setting for use with older bioses - though suspect strongly its your bios/mobo that's the problem here.

 

[kneckbone]

I am having the some problem with my samsung 120 hard drive, 'my computer' doesn't see the drive how were you able to overcome it?

 

[wolluf]

kneckbone - as mentioned, its probably your bios/mobo (if its a few years old, it may have a restriction in the size of drive it can recognise - 32GB was common). In this case, you need a bios upgrade (if one exists) to enable it to see larger drive, or buy a PCI controller card or use overlay software (NOT recommended).