No drive letter and cant get one

[garebo]

win xp pro (NTFS)
20 gig western digital formatted fat32, slaved
no drive letter


I have read quite a few posts right here on this issue and with most, if not all, there isnt much of a resolution. Some arent quite the same, must point that out.

Anyway, heres the problem. I have a 20 gig western digital hard drive that has win xp on it, but its formatted in fat32. I was using it a few years back as a experiment in
my main computer, to see how i liked NTFS compared to fat32. I built myself a new computer now and i want to check this old hard drive for any data i may have left on it before i reformat it. So i made it a slave and installed it as slave. Bios sees it correctly and there is no problem in dev mgr. It is listed in disk management as it shows up as a fat32 drive, active, formatted, but with no drive letter. I tried right-clicking and there are no options listed so i cant give it a drive letter, the only options being "delete partition" and "properties". I tried all i could think of to get a drive letter. I dont have anything else on this computer except the c drive (win xp pro NTFS) and a cdrom.

Can anyone help me out with this? Its not the end of the world as likely i already have any data that might be there, and there likely isnt anything there apart from the os, but i would like to make sure of that. In addition, i would like to solve the issue now so that when it happens again then maybe i will have the answer!

thanks


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[jward52]

I'm assuming you have your cd-rom and hdd on separate ide channels? If so, try the cd as a slave to the main system hdd and add the 20gb to the 2nd ide channel. I never added a 2nd hard drive as a slave on an ide channel that had another hdd, it just seemed wrong!

 

[mainegeek]

Did the OS automatically prompt to run disk check on the first bootup with the new drive attached? Usually prompting user to restart, then check disk kicks in to check drive integrity. If not, try scheduling (running) check disk.

 

[G0AOZ]

If it's FAT32, can you see it from a W98SE boot disk? Connect it up as the only HDD (to avoid confusion!) - what does FDISK tell you about it, if anything?

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[garebo]

Thanks for the replies, Im going to try and answer.

First off, i should have explained that i have this drive in a test setup i have, not in my new computer. I didnt think that part mattered so i didnt mention it. Either way, it was slaved to the master and set up properly.
So i have one hard drive with win xp pro, a cdrom, and a second hard drive, which is the one that win xp pro wont give a letter to. I have tried this h drive as a primary slave and a secondary master and secondary slave, all to the same end as i have described, no drive letter.

jward52
This is a test setup, i had it slaved to the primary master, then i changed it to slave to the cdrom, all the same, windows xp pro sees the drive but no drive letter.

Maingeek:
No, win xp has never instituted a chkdsk. And i cant find a way to force it.

G0AOZ:
I did that after win xp pro wouldnt give the drive a letter, I hooked it up as the only drive, used win98se boot disk and fdisk shows it as a non-dos partition. I dont know why as it was a win98se system drive that i used as backup in case i had problems with the main drive, i could pop it in and go.

It seems time has done done something to this drive. I was hoping to get it going as it is, just on the off-chance that there is some data on it, but i really doubt it. So i was thinking this would be a good time to mess around with win xp and see if i could force a drive letter out of it.

But i suppose the bottom line is that the drive somehow got scrambled in storage and with fdisk showing it as a non-dos partition i guess i cant do anything more with it unless i go ahead and reformat it. Win xp is not going to give it a drive letter and right clicking on the drive wont give me that option either.

I did do the fixdisk /mbr routine already, obviously to no good end.

Any other ideas before i go ahead and reformat?
thanks again

Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[jward52]

Nope, I have no more clues other than guessing the drive's controller is going bad. Be sure to post a followup on whether the drive shows a letter after you fdisk & format it.

 

[garebo]

I hadnt thought if that possibility,that is, the controller going bad. Of course i did try both channels, but i guess both could be bad at same time, but then again the other hard drive and the cdrom are fine, so i dont think its the controller. But i am going to try the drive in another computer before i reformat it.
This test unit is an Aopen, P3733, older but been doing testing on it for years.

Also,i am going to wait for more answers, no rush on this.


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[garebo]

Okay, i went ahead and formatted the drive in win xp pro and then it gave me a drive letter.

The hard drive was a backup and i dont recall ever using it, it just sat around for 3 or 4 yrs and somehow it lost some of its formatting. I did try the fdisk /mbr from my floppy drive and that didnt help. For some reason it was showing up in fdisk and win xp as a non-dos partition. From my experience that means something has happened to that drive, some loss of file structure, something like that.
Its just that i couldnt get win xp to give it a drive letter as it was, ended up having to reformat the drive.
I was simply trying to learn something here in a situation where there is no loss incurred by trying different methods.
None of the different methods worked so its now reformatted.

Thanks to those who tried to help.

Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[G0AOZ]

I didn't get back to this forum before you formatted it - you were too quick or too impatient! lol...

I would have suggested giving something like GetDatBack a go, purely to see what it would make of it. You could still do this now of course. That software has been known to pull stuff out of the hat after a partition and format.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[garebo]

I dont know if i have that or not, will have to look around and see.
thanks
Yes, i guess i should have waited like i said i was going to. The reason is that the drive was always only a backup drive and i never had a reason to use it. I use those ide removable trays and use a small h drive as a backup, with the os on it, ready to go, in case of major probs, i never had anything that major so i never used the drive. In the meantime it went bad, which i find is fairly common, least in my experience.
I was trying to find a way to have win xp give it a drive letter but i think i exhausted all those efforts and didnt care that much about the contents of the drive.
thanks for your help.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips