Windows 98 not recogninzing Slave Drive after Reinstall

[Timthecomputerguy]

Ok, I picked up a computer from a customer who wanted me to reinstall Win 98 SE on it (p3 500MHZ), as it was giving multiple errors and he just wants to keep it going, He had added a second HD . a Maxtor 120gb HD which he had been using as his main saving area and i moved all other important files to it as well before begining the reformat...

Once i finally got his C: reformated and windows reinstalled, the BIOS shows the 2nd HD, but Windows does not show it. I am completely baffled as to what to do to get this drive recognized, it has a lot of important data on it so a reformat is definately out of the question, any ideas on what i can do would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[jackschmittusa]

Which ide channel? Jumpering? Drive overlay? Mb drivers installed?

 

[Timthecomputerguy]

Its on the Primary Channel, all jumpering is correct (worked fine before i did the reinstall), the drivers all seem to be updated correctly.

When running MaxBlast software it "sees" the drive and wants me to reformat it (not a viable option), and when i boot the computer the BIOS shows the drive.

but it doesnt get a drive letter assigned so i can not access it.

I am completely stumped and confused, I have the system back up and running completely all other issues have been rseolved, BUT i cannot get his data back, that i moved over to that drive b4 i began the reformat.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

98SE natively supports up to 120 Gb so it's not an update issue with the OS.

My guess is you probably need to update the hard drive controller driver to support that large a drive.

Really unlikely, but check to make sure the 120Gb drive isn't formatted in NTFS. He may have had an NTFS driver installed (98 doesn't natively support NTFS).

 

[jackschmittusa]

I was curious as to whether it was useing master/slave, or cable select with the jumpering. Can the drive be accessed from a bootdisk?

 

[Creston]

Can you connect the harddisk to the second IDE controller, set it as master, and run it from there?

Creston

 

[Fern]

Hi Tim and Welcome to the Forums!

This seems an odd one. Sounds like the second HDD was working in the rig b4 the reinstall you did. Double check the cabling and power connector.

Also, I had a problem similar to this once (HDD shows up in BIOS, but not 98se). The problem turned out to be a bad line from the PSU. I discovered this was the case by hooking up the molex connector, which was on the HDD, to a case fan. When I booted up and the case fan didn't spin I knew I had it. In other words, this could be a problem with power to the second HDD.

Good Luck with it,

Fern