Win98 will not read or write ;to second hard drive

[Guest_imported]

Hi there

here's the problem. I've installed a second hard drive in my machine. It's set as the slave on the primary IDE and is recognized by the bios (auto select). Once the system boots up the drive is listed in explorer but windows gives an error if you click on it (DRIVE D:\ is not accessible). I've checked in the system settings and the drive is listed as functioning and the IDE port says the same. Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[teknoguy]

is the hard drive partitioned and formated?
go into dos prompt and type fdisk to partition the drive.
then type c: format or you can format once windows boots up. right click on the drive then click format.

 

[Guest_imported]

Sorry about that. I guess I should have explained further. I've added a new hard drive as the master (drive c) and the drive that won't respond is the old hard drive with all the files and partitioning intact. What I hoped to do was set up the new drive (which I've done) with an operating system etc. and then copy some of the files off the old drive before re-formatting it.

So I'm still not sure what's wrong.

 

[wolluf]

What's your new operating system? And what's the filestore on old drive? (cos XP in particular can have problems reading Win9x/ME created FAT32 partitions).

PS. If old operating system can access new disks filestore, you could try swapping master/slave so old system boots & then copying files you want.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks Wolluf

This is a little like diagnosing the emporeror by peering through a keyhole! More background: I'm using the same operating system on the new disk as with the old (WIN98) and I have been able to go back and forth between drives alternately setting the old one as master and new as slave etc. The thing I don't seem to be able to do is get a master slave setup running. I'm using a 40 wire cable (but have also tried and ATA 66 80 wire cable).
So at this point I can run on drive (either one, the old or the new) both setup with WIN98 but not two drives. Oh yes, I've checked the jumper settings to make sure they were set correctly. The only combination I have not tried is cable select. Maybe I should do that.

Thanks again

 

[Guest_imported]

A friend of mine was having trouble booting past go back. Windows would not load. He is running win98. He went to go back, but before go back finished he rebooted his system.This time when he went to go back he clicked yes to unistall go back. (I can't believe he did that. Windows now loads but now d drive(his second hard drive) is missing. It does not appear at all. Any ideas on how to get the PC to reconize the D drive? Thank you

 

[wolluf]

There's another post with a similar problem - I'll make similar suggestion (may be no use). What if you run second hard drive as master on the second IDE channel (make your CD/DVD slave on that channel)?

 

[wolluf]

Rhoman,

Just noticed the other post is you too!

 

[Guest_imported]

Sorry Wolluf

Let's close this thread down and continue in the new one. I should'nt have started the second but I guess I'm new at this.

Thanks for your help and, oh yes, I did try to run the second drive in the other IDE connector. For the sorry results see the new thread.

 

[GrandpaCarl]

,HI RHOMAN,

I have seen this effect under several occasions. The first one was when the "old" drive was using Disk Manager or something like that. It works fine when used as the master, but will not work when relegated to the slave position.

Also saw the effect when the original disk used GoBack.

May have to remove GoBack or Reformat and make sure Disk Manager is not used in the same way.

You may be better off to use the new drive as slave to start out, making sure that you do NOT use something like Disk Manager in setting it up. Then you can copy the data from old to new. Now reformat the old drive, again NOT using DM. Now you san swap the drives by changing jumpers.

If you must use DM because of limitations of bios, then I suggest you get a bios update or get a new motherboard.

GrandpaCarl

 

[fourplay]

I had a harddrive problem, so I got a new one. I am having problems getting it to boot. I did the partitions, formatted it, copied system files and my widows files but cant get it to run. It will boot with my startup disk to dos but that is all. help please.