XP and old Harddrives

[CptHefner]

Hi, Got a problem. Recently got a lovely new XP machine, works great, but I've tried to hook up my old Quantum fireball to the new PC. All the wizards etc work fine and the PC recognises the drive and 'installs' it or apparently installs it. When I try and see the drive and access any info from it, there is no drive there (can't even allocate a letter to it).

So I said screw it, I'll reinstall it into my old Win 98 machine and burn the data to CD and just copy it across, now my old machine won't recognise the drive either!

I've heard of a problem where XP changes the FAT table of any drive to be XP compatible, which then causes the problem I have.

I'd appreciate any help, either getting the Fireball recognised and installed in my XP machine or just getting it working again in my Win 98 machine, ideally the former.

Cheers

 

[firewolfrl]

Is the Drive seen at boot-up or in the BIOS?
Are the jumpers set on the drive correctly? (some newer machines prefer cable select)
please give the specs on the machine.

run the program
C:\WINDOWS\system32\diskmgmt.msc
with the drive installed, if you can see the drive with this program it should let you assign drive letters.

I use XP and 98 daily together with no problem at all (6 drives with 98, XP, 2k, BSD, Linux)
this is the first I have heard about xp changing a FAT32 partition

 

[CptHefner]

Hey,

The drive is recognised by the Bios and by the diskmanagement tool (as unallocated) if I click properties, the assign drive letter option is not given just the new partition and properties. If i click properties it shows the drive (Quantum Fireball EL7.6A) as only having a capacity of 251 Mb, whereas it has 4G.

What do I do now, is this a simple case of getting a new driver for the QF drive.

Any assistance would be appreciated

Thanks

 

[bcastner]

When you originally setup the drive, did you use any sort of manufacturer's bootloader to allow your old computer to see the 40 Gigs?

There were often utilities to setup the drive that would allow one to avoid BIOS limitations and LBA addressing issues with the use of a loader written to the drive.

This is going to be a problem with XP. You might want to see what you used to install the drive, and call Quantam tech support. Any attempts to fiddle with the drive at this point could lead to irrreversible data loss.