Second Harddrive not showing up under XP Pro

[Valen]

So I've got two hard drives in my computer, they are both recognized by the bios, and the hardware manager sees them as well, however, under "My Computer" it only recognizes the Primary drive and not the secondary. What gives? All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Justin N. Bishop
Webmaster
TIB, Inc.

jbishop@tib.com

 

[BChumie]

You probably need to format the new hard drive in order for windows to recognize it.

1.What you need to do is right-click on "my computer"
2. Select "Manage"
3.Then when a window pops up look for an option called disk management (i bleive)
4. Select that and on the right hand side of the box you should see your original hard drive and the new one
5. Select the new one and format it to the correct file system

I am not sure if this is the exact procedure but it should be enough to format it. Hope that helps.



-Brad

 

[BChumie]

You probably need to format the new hard drive in order for windows to recognize it.

1.What you need to do is right-click on "my computer"
2. Select "Manage"
3.Then when a window pops up look for an option called disk management (i believe)
4. Select that and on the right hand side of the box you should see your original hard drive and the new one
5. Select the new one and format it to the correct file system

I am not sure if this is the exact procedure but it should be enough to format it. Hope that helps.



-Brad

 

[Valen]

Thanks Brad, I'll look into that, I think it might be possible that the drive isn't partioned either. However this isn't a new drive so I'm not sure what the problem is. All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Justin N. Bishop
Webmaster
TIB, Inc.

jbishop@tib.com

 

[BChumie]

Justin,
Yeah when I say formating I mean partition/format... forgot that detail . Any ways good luck with your venture.

Where did this drive get taken from (ie. if it is not a new drive then what file system was on it before?)

Brad

 

[BChumie]

Justin,
Yeah when I say formating I mean partition/format... forgot that detail . Any ways good luck with your venture.

Where did this drive get taken from (ie. if it is not a new drive then what file system was on it before?)

Brad

also I believe you can get to the partition/formating wizard through administrative tools

 

[Valen]

It was taken from my old system, its a maxtor 8gig and it should be on the fat32 file system, however my 30 gig drive (the one that I'm using as my primary) is now NTFS but I don't think that would make a difference because I was having this problem when both drives were FAT32 All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Justin N. Bishop
Webmaster
TIB, Inc.

jbishop@tib.com

 

[thamantii]

One drive isnt NTFS and the other FAT32 is it? i think but im not sure that if your main is NTFS it wont be able to read the other if it is FAT32...just a thought not 100%positive.

You might try going in and partition the FAT32 to NTFS and see if that helps if not then i dont know whats up

 

[christheprogrammer]

That's not true, thamantii, I have my XP OS on an NTFS partition, and another data drive is FAT32, and I have no problems. Chris says: "It's time for a beer."

 

[EddieVenus]

You might also have both drives set to master, though your BIOS should have noticed that. OR you may have your other drive on a RAID controller, if this is a new board, and XP does not have the drivers for the controller installed. Or you might have them both set to primary partitions, though XP is smart enough to see through that, it could be an issue I'm told. Or the drive letter in use by the second drive could be disabled by XP powertoys, and you would need to reinstate that drive letter to see the drive. Or there is a hardware conflict and the drive is being turned off to save the machine from crashing. If any of these sound familiar look into them, there are only so many reasons for a drive not to show up. Also are you sure it is fat32 and not fat. I think XP can read FAT ok, but I cannot say from experience. I would try looking in your Hardware settings, under system properties to see if you see anything wrong there, and then look in your bios for anything strange too. Do a HD discovery in your BIOS to reset them, and then try to reset the ACPI stuff in you BIOS. I only mention the ACPI since a few years ago I ran into a weird one like this and that for some reason resolved it. It was on an Abit board though. If all else fails see what you can see with Partition Magic, maybe it is a simple fix there.