Probs installing hard drive

[Regan6]

Hi, I'm having some problems installing a new hard drive onto my computer, or rather I'm having problems getting windows to recognise it.

I currently have two hard drives on my computer; 30 gig drive that's been on the computer since it was bought (C: ), and an 80 gig Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drive that I installed about a year ago (D:, the cd drive had become E: ). I've purchased a new 120 gig Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, and I've replaced the 80 gig drive with this one. Unfortunately it's not recognising the new drive. I also purchased XP to replace my old windows 98

My plan is/was to replace the 80 gig drive with the 120 gig drive, transfer my important files over from the 30 gig drive to the new drive, and install XP on the new drive. Then I would replace the 30 gig drive with the 120 gig drive as the master drive, and then reinstall the 80 gig drive as the slave drive.

Unfortunatly, the plan has stalled since I can't get windows to recognise the new drive. I can't see it on explorer, all I get is A:, C:, and D: (the cd drive). I've checked the BIOS settings, and they're set to auto, i've also checked the system properties, where it has detected a two 'GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE47', one labelled C:, the other isn't labelled, and I can't label it.

I'm pretty much out of ideas now. When I installed the 80 gig drive about a year ago, I recall that all I had to do was change the BIOS settings to auto, and windows was able to recognise the new drive in explorer, which I just that had to right click the drive and select to format it.

I could really use to some help and guidance as to what I'm doing wrong, if I'm doing anything wrong at all.

Thanks in advance

[Cricket]

You've got to prep the drive before Win98 can use it. You gotta run FDISK to partition the hard drive first and then run FORMAT to format each partition. If you need help with FDISK and FORMAT, go here.

If you don't have a Win98 set up disk with FDISK and FORMAT on it, go here.

Cricket

[glc]

Actually, with Win98, you can run FDISK and FORMAT from within Windows at a DOS prompt because it's not the OS drive. You don't necessarily need a bootdisk. Be aware of the FDISK issue with drives larger than 64gb.

Why don't you just disconnect all but the new 120gb drive, and install XP on it clean as long as this is what you want to wind up with anyway? Then you can reconnect the old drives as desired and move stuff around, etc.

[heymrdj]

Thats what I did when I installed my new 160GB Seagate drive. Easiest method so I could have my 160GB, my 120GB, and my old 30GB. (aniem and roms take alot of space)

[Regan6]

Well guys. I've fixed it! I removed all but the new hard drive, formatted it, ran the XP cd and installed it. I installed the 30 gig drive, transferred all of my important files to the new drive, removed the 30 gig drive and replaced it with the 80 gig drive. Everythings going fine, apart from the fact that it can't detect my sound card now, but I'll post that in its particular section.

here
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...399#post991399

Thanks for the help guys, cheers!