2nd Hard drive not showing up in WinXP

[nikko]

I just bought two Maxtor 160 GB IDE hard drives thanks to the Fry's special posted over in Hot Deals. I installed them both, and when my computer posts, they both show up as they should (along with my 2 optical drives on the other IDE channel). But in WinXP, I only see the boot drive and the two optical drives. All the drives show up in Control Panel, but not in Windows Explorer. I tried to install MaxBlast 3 (Maxtor's software), but it kept having a fatal error every time I started the program. Reinstalled with the same result.

Any ideas on what I need to do to get this right? For what it's worth, I just did a fresh install of XP Pro and downloaded/installed the most recent service packs, etc.

 

[zlooop]

System specs?

Did you update your bios recently?

 

[RyanM]

Did you format the second drive? Go to disk management and see how it's listed there. Also, try putting 1 HD and 1 Optical on each channel, and make sure they're jumpered master/slave properly. You'll get better performance if each HD is on a different channel.

 

[nikko]

Originally posted by: MachFive
Also, try putting 1 HD and 1 Optical on each channel, and make sure they're jumpered master/slave properly. You'll get better performance if each HD is on a different channel.

Ok, I'll give that a shot. Just so I know, will that likely change my drive letter assignments in Windows? i.e. if I move my DVD+R drive, which is currently my E: drive, could it become my C: drive, or something screwy like that?

 

[RyanM]

Nope. XP recognizes the drive itself and keeps it assigned to the letter, it doesn't bother with the channel.

When I switched both of my hard drives over to SATA using Abit Serielle converters a year ago, Windows didn't even blink.