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Old HD installed, not seen in My Computer?!

J

JAWS1

Member
I installed a new HD with Win XP pro (FAT32) and it is connected as a Master, via a seriallel2 adapter to the SATA1 on my ABIT IS7 board. It is up and running thanks to alot of help from this FORUM. It is partitioned as Disk1 and all volumes recieved letters with the final two letters going to my CDROM and CDRW.

After I installed and had all that going, I put in my old HD, to transfer some files etc.. It is also FAT32, connected as Master on the IDE1 cable, I'm not using the ME OS that is on it. The device mgr. and disk mgr. in administration both see it. Disk mgr lists it as DSK0, basic/online, active, and healthy w/a 37GB primary partition. No volume letter. And I think it is because it has no letter that I am unable to see this drive in MY COMPUTER.

I searched the FAQ's and FORUMS but haven't seen a clear answer. I also spent about 2 hrs in the Managment Console trying to change from DSK0 to DSK2 (just seems like it should be). But mostly, I was tryiing to assign the volume a letter and I also tried to eliminate the letter assigned to the CDROM since it has the next volume letter following DSK1 and it's volumes. In fact I even tried to expand the last volume of Disk1 to try and recover a little over 5GB's windows swiped off Disk1 somewhere along the line (and it wasn't for the OS). If I right click on the DSK0 line in Disk mgt. the only options I get are to delete the partition, properties, change it to a Dynamic disk or help.

Anyway, I was NOT successful in doing any of those things. I feel that I tried every cinceivable combination of commands etc. but obviously did or didn't do something. Could someone inform me where I'm going stupid, please. Maybe it's not even done in the console, I don't know (I guess that is obvious)!! I don't even really care at this point if it has a letter or a number, I just want to get into the dang thing. Thanks to anyone who is willing to help in advance.🙂JAWS
 
Try opening Disk Management in Computer Management. Right click on the partition, and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths..."; Add a drive letter in there.

Hope this helps. 🙂
 
Since you have not posted back I assume that what <FONT face=Verdana>jliechty said in the above post didn't help.

Go back to computer management and right click properties on the drive in question and see if that drive shows the file system. In my experience when you put in a disk and it is not assigned a drive letter windows doesn't detect a file system. Thus it needs to be formated.

If properties comes back showing unformated partition or something like that I would suggest running the diagnostic program downloadable from your manufacturers website. You may need to find some file recovery program. It seems like I saw a thread a while back where someone downloaded a freeware/shareware from one of the download sites that worked. </FONT>
 
jliechty, If I right click on the DSK0 line in Disk mgt. or the info box below, the only options I get are to delete the partition, properties, change it to a Dynamic disk or help. Change drive letter and etc. is grayed out.

SemperFi, In the window it says FAT32 and in properties under volume it says the partition style is Master Boot Record (MBR). If thats what you meant? Which is the same as is listed for Disk1. Also, I did initially forget about the WD Master w/no slave thing, but I fixed that Sunday.

It's like everything is there but needs to be told it's ok' Everything but a letter for the volume, which it doesn't seem to want to let me change. I'm stumped, guess I'll try the console thing again. Thanks, JAWS
 
That is weird. Ok one more question. When you look in disk management and your master drive shows up as disk 0 and the one that is giving you problems is disk 1. Does it show as fat 32 on the partition of disk 1 on the main screen of disk manager? I just checked my disk manager. Does it say healthy on the partition along with the file system?

I plug drives in my system all the time and they are all automaticly given a drive letter in xp unless it is an unformated drive. It doesn't make sense that it sees it as fat 32 and doesn't assign a letter.
 
Thanks alot guys!! I appreciate your help. It is a wierd problem but guess what!

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

Just in case you or a friend run across this again.... Im not the brightest bulb in the pack but even I knew, with all things that have been discussed in this thread, (and more) checked and/or done, this didn't make any sense. So I searched and read until I felt ready to max the SAT's. I hate to give MS credit for much lately, but that is where I found my answer, in the MS knowlege base.

The answer is simple. If you put in an old HD into a win xp system as a second HD, as I did, and it has GOBACK on it, you get the resuts that I did.

The solution is almost as easy. 1. You can upgrade your version if your version wasn't taken off a system recovery disk like mine, (no full version disk, no key), or.. 2. You can disconnect your main HD and connect your add on HD as the master and boot up. Then you go into GOBACK and disable or delete it and shut down. Then you put your system back the way you had it, and boot, and walah, there it is, your second HD just like it is supposed to be. I had to change my boot order in the bios for some reason, but after about three try's I got it all to work. Until you do one of those two things you will not access that drive, PERIOD!

So simple it's irritating. Just another one of those MS SNAFU's I guess. Go figure!?
Thanks again! JAWS:beer:🙂

Just in case anyone read this far I have another question. I tried to expand a volume in the managers console, and after I finally figured out how to word it to get an answer, the answer was... only NTFS files can be expanded in the mgt. console.

So is there a way to expand a FAT32 volume? (to use up the GB's that windows wasted) Thanks!
 
Originally posted by: JAWS1
So is there a way to expand a FAT32 volume? (to use up the GB's that windows wasted) Thanks!
Click to expand...
PartitionMagic is my favorite program for the purpose of resizing and managing partitions. However, if you're looking for a free program to resize a partition, check this list from Google (examples: one program and another).

Any time you resize or move partitons, it's best to back up the data that is on them before proceeding, because there is a chance that your data could be lost if something goes wrong during the operation.
 
If you don't have partition magic, move all your files off of the drive temporarily and go back to disk management and delete all of the partitions then resize as you see fit.
 
Thanks guys for the answers and thanks jliechty for the links. I'll have to check them out. Well, now I guess it's on to Networking. Not sure I want to even think about opening that can of worms, but oh well. Guess I just don't feel right if I don't have 5 or 6 problems to worry about and bug guys like you about! Thanks again! JAWS
 
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