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hard drive problem

I

imported_tekster

Junior Member
I just finished installing a new processor, motherboard and video cards. i have an 80gb western digital as my master drive, with xp on it. i also connected a 300gb seagate, the bios detects the hard drive, but it does not show up in My Computer, or in System restore tab. I have a program called Everest, it detects it also, but i cannot access it. im not sure what to do or how to get it
 
Format it and it will show up.

Start -> Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management
 
Don't format!

You say it already was in use before and contains substantial information. Then it was formatted, etc before. IF we assume it has not been damaged (fair assumption) the problem is elsewhere.

You say the BIOS sees the disk and one software tool can see it, but Windows can't so Windows is the problem. I am not yet familiar with XP, but I believe there are tools within Disk Management used to tell Windows to look for a hard disk and use it. By the way, are you sure the BIOS is set correctly about its size, etc - usually this is done automatically and there is no problem. And in Windows, make sure the OS knows which file system to expect on this drive - I am presuming NTFS for a big drive, but check it.

Oh, and if this is a PATA drive, is it (and your 80 GB) set to Master and Slave so they can share an IDE channel (or, did you go Cable Select?) Or, if they used to share a channel and you split them up, did you adjust for that? Of course, if these are SATA none of this applies.
 
I have never used it, but I assume that it is similar to MaxBlast. The link that I gave had basic instructions on setting it up, depending on whether you chose the DOS or Windows version (I would probably use the DOS). The program should be fairly self explanatory when you run it. I suspect that the problem is either with your jumper settings, or with the manner in which the IDE cable is connected to the drives. I can't remember clearly, but I had a similar problem with with adding a WDC drive once, and changing the jumpers solved the problem.
 
ok, well i think i may need to format my drive in order to get it to work, that was the last thing i wanted to do, i have about 100-150gb stuff on it, mostly songs and games and stuff, but still
 
yeah, well since it was only games and songs and i have the list of 80% of the info on it, i went on and formatted it, it now shows up and works. my system was set up to use a drive that was that big, so it had to enable that, and in doing so the drive needed to be formatted to be used by the system. so i just did it.
thanks alot to everyone who responded 🙂
 
Burn a Knoppix Live CD or first create/then burn a UBCD4win cd and boot from them, and see if they read the drive. I have had very good luck with both and consider them essential tools. Then check your bios settings - you havent made it clear that these are pata drives if they are not, ie seagate is a sata thats a whole different scenario.

If you format you will lose all your data. WD hds can behave in an odd way because of the jumpers - make sure that the secondary drive is set as a slave not cs, and the primary as master- sometimes there is even a separate jumper setting for a single drive and a master with a slave. Better still disconnect the WD, make the seagate your primary drive, boot off the CD s mentioned and then see if they see the drive and its files.

Take your time, maybe try putting it on another pc, and and there are quite a few other options that you can try. If the bios sees it and there is no physical damage to the drive, all the data should be recoverable, or at least most of it.
 
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