Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

WinXP doesn't recognize my primary slave HDD

xneoangel

xneoangel

Persona User
I have 2 IDE Hard Drives, a Maxtor 120GB as the primary master and a Seagate 80GB as the primary slave.

So well i had a problem and decided to backup my stuff in the 80GB drive and formatting my 120GB drive, windows install program formatted my drive just fine and it installed windows and all, but when i tried to get the stuff on the 80GB drive back to the 120GB one, it turns out that windows doesnt recognize the 80GB Seagate drive, so i went to the device manager but i can't see the drive there either.

Now the BIOS does recognize the drive and all the drive options are set to AUTO, the problem is that windows doesn't recognize it.

Both of my Hard Drives are formatted with NTFS partitions.

It all worked fine before formatting but still i re-checked the jumper settings just to be sure and everything is fine the Maxtor was set to Master and the Seagate to Slave.

I changed the IDE Ultra ATA cables to see if it was a cable problem, but no, the cables are fine because it did the same thing with the new cable.

I really don't know what to do and i need to get that info back, because if i lose it i'm gonna get killed by my family :(

The weird thing is that it worked just fine before the formatting but it all got messed up after it.

Do you guys know what to do in a case like this?
 
Last edited:
WhiteX

WhiteX

New member
Have you checked the disk manager?
Have you disabled the drive letter under, say, TweakUI?
Both IDE channels are turned on by the BIOS?
 
OP
xneoangel

xneoangel

Persona User
Long time no see... Master :p

Yeah it doesnt show up in disk manager.
I also tried TweakUI but it didnt work either.
Yes both IDE Channels are on, the BIOS does detect the Hard Drive the problem is that windows doesn't recognize it, in fact both drives were working fine but the secondary drive got messed up after i re-formatted my Master Drive.
 
Last edited:
zAlbee

zAlbee

Keeper of The Iron Tail
That is weird. Look for any drivers that should be installed for your motherboard/chipset, such as ATA drivers. My board uses VIA 4-in-1 drivers, don't know what nForce has.
 
Toasty

Toasty

Sony battery
This is more of a work-around than a fix, but you could boot a Linux live-CD and if Linux can mount the problem-partition, you could copy all the data to another location that Windows can access.
 
BoggyB

BoggyB

New member
In Control Panel, go to Administrative Tools and open Computer Management. Select Disk Management on the left, and then see if it's listed there. If it's listed with no drive letter, then right-click on the partition and pick "Change drive letter and paths", then add a drive letter.

If it's not there then another thing you could try is opening device manager, then right-clicking in the list and picking "Scan for hardware changes". That might pick it up.
 
OP
xneoangel

xneoangel

Persona User
Hmm no icant see the drive in dvice manager and scan for hardware changes doesnt works.

I tried booting from a linux live cd and it detected the drive but i could not copy the data, i couldnt even create folders in the drive that windows detects, maybe i have to activate an option or something.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

this is the linux livecd i downloaded

EDIT: i just read i cannot write or edit files i windows NTFS partitions... now o fell stupid i better read before trying.
 
Last edited:
OP
xneoangel

xneoangel

Persona User
I just found the problem, now i feel even more stupid lol, the IDE Cable was loose but for some reason the BIOS still detected the drive... anyway it works now and my info is safe.

Thanks for your help.
 
BoggyB

BoggyB

New member
Been there, done that...

In my case it was a network card half-inserted into a PCI slot. The network card saw the switch fine, the switch saw the network card, Windows didn't want to know. Why it didn't fry the card or bus I don't know.

Those problems are always a bugger to track down.
 
WhiteX

WhiteX

New member
xneoangel said:
I just found the problem, now i feel even more stupid lol, the IDE Cable was loose but for some reason the BIOS still detected the drive... anyway it works now and my info is safe.

Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

1000 pushups, soldier, NOW! :police:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Top