XP won't show drive in My Computer

[cicero]

I recently bought a new hard drive (120GB Seagate) for my computer (Gateway) to add to my old one (80GB Seagate) and allow me to re-install windows since the old installation had several problems. Anyway, I took the old one out of my computer, put the new one in, and installed Windows XP without any problems. Then I put the old HD back in as a slave to my new HD, and booted up the computer. When I turned it on and went into the BIOS, it recognized both HD's perfectly, but when I got to Windows and looked in My Computer, only the new HD was there. I checked device manager, and both HD's showed up, but I can't access the old one through My Computer. What's wrong?

Thanks

[Panama Red]

Assuming you have them both jumpered to Cable Select (CS), it might have something to do with the Gateway recovery partition. Can you see them both in Disk Management?

[cicero]

Where is disk management?

Right now one is slave and the other is master, if I set them to cable select, which one will it end up booting from?

[Panama Red]

Put the new drive on the end of the cable (black connector) and the old one in the middle (gray connector). It will use the new drive as master and boot from there. Disk Management is Start/control panel/Admin Tools/computer mgmnt/disk mgmnt

[cicero]

I changed both to cable select, and I can see both drives in disk management. But the old one doesn't have a volume name in disk management, and I still can't see it in my computer.

[Panama Red]

Lack of volume name is no big deal. That just means Gateway didn't name the C: drive anything special. You can right click on it and rename it if you want to, but I don't think that will solve the My Computer recognition problem. I'm fresh out of ideas for tonite. Hopefully, someone else will come along with the final solution.

[cicero]

Do you think it has something to do with permissions, since WinXP is still installed on there.

[codered6651]

Do you have XP on both HDD? If so you may have to format one in order for you to see the both in My Computer? You mentioned something in your sig about buying in the future a SATA drive if this is what you have the setup is a little different when one is SATA and the other is Ultra Ata go to www.seagate.com/support for further info. Hope this will help you out. As you can see in my sig I have two seagates' also but they're both Ultra Ata. When I installed mine I too had the same results so I used windows XPs partitioning and formatting instructions from seagates' site. Good Luck!!! Let us know how you make out.

[Panama Red]

Just a hunch. What file system did you use on the new install, NTFS or FAT32? If you used FAT32 it won't see the files on NTFS. NTFS will read FAT32 but not the other way.

[glc]

If you used FAT32 it won't see the files on NTFS. NTFS will read FAT32 but not the other way.

Do you have documentation to support this? Not arguing, but it really doesn't make sense to me. Does ntfs.sys not get installed when you install XP on a FAT32 partition?

[Panama Red]

Do you have documentation to support this? Not arguing, but it really doesn't make sense to me. Does ntfs.sys not get installed when you install XP on a FAT32 partition?

ya got me, g! I was confusing Win98 not being able to read NTFS files. The ability to 'see' appears to be based on Operating Systems, not files systems. My apology, cicero, for misleading you.

[cicero]

message was moved to next post...sorry

[cicero]

message was moved next post...sorry

[cicero]

Just a hunch. What file system did you use on the new install, NTFS or FAT32? If you used FAT32 it won't see the files on NTFS. NTFS will read FAT32 but not the other way.

both drives are NTFS

Do you have XP on both HDD? If so you may have to format one in order for you to see the both in My Computer? You mentioned something in your sig about buying in the future a SATA drive if this is what you have the setup is a little different when one is SATA and the other is Ultra Ata go to www.seagate.com/support for further info. Hope this will help you out. As you can see in my sig I have two seagates' also but they're both Ultra Ata. When I installed mine I too had the same results so I used windows XPs partitioning and formatting instructions from seagates' site. Good Luck!!! Let us know how you make out.

Sorry, I didn't mention that this isn't actually my computer, it's a friend's and I was helping them with it. Anyway, both drives are on the primary IDE channel.

ya got me, g! I was confusing Win98 not being able to read NTFS files. The ability to 'see' appears to be based on Operating Systems, not files systems. My apology, cicero, for misleading you.

No problem.

Well, the old one had WinXP on it, and then we installed XP on the new one, so XP should be abel to "see" both drives, right?

[Panama Red]

Man, I'm running out of ideas. We haven't discussed ide cables yet. Are yours 40 wire or 80 wire? Have you tried another cable yet? If you're using an 80 wire then the CS jumpering is correct. If it's 40 wire, they should be jumpered as Master/Slave.

[Panama Red]

Just posted to a similar problem in another thread. I mentioned earlier the possibility of the Recovery Partiton causing the problem. I think I have a solution. If you have access to Partition Magic I think you will see the hidden recovery partiton that was part of the original Gateway hard drive. It will be a small FAT file system partition. Use PM to reformat that partition to NTFS and merge it with the larger partition. None of the files should be affected by PM, but make the back up disks just in case. See if that allows My Computer to ID the hard drive.