Larg hard Disks & windows XP

[Herriot]

Hi folks
Sincere apologies if this question has been asked and answer.

A friend of mine has installed 2 x 160Gb Hard Drives in his PC. Both Hard disks are recognised in the BIOS but only one - the C: drive - is recognised and displays when Windows XP Pro loads.

Any help on why this would be the case would be appreciated.

Again, I apologise if this is not enough information but it's all I have :-(

Regards

Herriot

 

[Nelviticus]

Firstly, assuming they're IDE drives and not SATA you need to make sure that the jumpers on the drives (little plastic connectors on tiny pins) are set properly. One drive must be 'master' and one must be 'slave'. Many drives have a label with a diagram showing how to set the jumpers but if not, check the manufacturer's web site.

Secondly, you might need to tell Windows about the new drive. Right-click 'My Computer' and select 'Manage', then go into the 'Disk Management' item under 'Storage'. Here the top window will show you all the logical drives that are mounted and the bottom window will list all the physical devices that are attached.

If the second drive doesn't appear in the top window it should definitely appear in the bottom one. Just right-click on its entry and you should get a menu of options. I can't recall which option you need as I don't have any un-mounted drives on this machine, but it should be pretty self-explanatory after that.

Hope that helps!

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[bcastner]

. Jumpers and cabling are always issues. The primary drive should use the last cable connector, the slave drive the middle connector. You should set both to cable select if you can.

. XP does not "see" drives without partitions and formatted. Start, Administrative Tools, Disk Management. Scroll the screen and see if the Drives are there but not assigned drive letters because they have no partitions and format.

 

[tf1]

Most likely is that your friend formated the disk that he installed Windows on, but the other disk still hasn't been formated. ALthough it is recognised in BIOS, WIndows will need to format it first.

Regards: tf1

 

[bcastner]

Darn, I always forget there is a second step under Administrative Tools before you reach Disk Management.

Thanks for the reminder Nelviticus. I always Start, Run, diskmgmt.msc

 

[headsup7]

this issue also occurs if you load a xp edition without service pack 1/2 ...o/c of xp load put service pack on and it will reconise the full ammount of hard drive

I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
Heads

 

[Herriot]

Thanks for all your help and tips. I have passed the information on but as yet have not had a response as to whether it works or not. Rest assured that as soon as I know I'll let you all know.

Regards

 

[linney]

Possibly it might have been this?


To initialize new disks. (From Help and Support)

Open Computer Management (Local).
In the console tree, click Disk Management.

Navigate to -
Computer Management (Local) / Storage / Disk Management

Right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk.
In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select the disk(s) to initialize.


The disk is initialized as a basic disk.