logicalconfusion Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 I got an old XP sp3 machine w/ a p4 that was recently upgraded with ram and an rather old WDC 40 gig HD. I set the pin on the back to slave and the primary HD to master. The bios is set to use the maxtor as the primary master HD. For some reason the system is not detecting the recently added IDE drive. I got info on the drive using a sys analyzer utility on Hiren's boot disk - WDC400BB-75JHC0, so the system knows its on board(plugged into the mb) but wont allow partitioning. The XP device manager also shows the drive as a component of the system. How can I get explorer to recognize and partition it? BIOS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 Right click the MyComputer icon, click manage, go to disk managment, see if the one shows there as not formatted, pick how you want to set it up and format it. Its possible the old drive had another file system on it, and partitioned with something like an EXT3 file system for example? If so, it can't be read it under XP(normally, although I do believe there are tools that allow windows to read from ext3 partitions and format over them), and might have to boot it under linux and format it as ntfs before XP can see it again if its formatted as something under linux, or had say, an encrypted file system. If windows can see the HDD under Disk Managment, try formatting it, but be sure it sees the full size of the disk. If it only sees like 2 megs, then it probably has another file system on it that Windows can't read that part of the partition and won't be able to format it, you'd need to do it under Linux, then under windows it should see it. I've actually run into this with thumb drives, that I partitioned under linux, windows can only see the free space left on them, but can't see or read the ext4 file system on them, even though it was like a 4GB drive, windows could only see 2GB of space and only format that part of the drive. Just something to look into. If it only ever had fat-16, fat-32, or NTFS on it, then disk managment should be able to see the drive and let you format it, but won;t show up under my computer if something is borked, but should show under disk managment. Make sure you tell it to scan for new drives too, sometimes that makes it show up under disk managment and you can then format it. Make sure the BIOS isn't set to something weird and can do LBA or such for the slave drive, or just set it to auto of it has that setting. XP is weird, but sometimes the bios can prevent XP from seeing it depending on the cylinder size selected and if the BIOS supports certain HDD drive sizes. For example, i doubt the older board would see a 2TB drive and be able to use all of its space, you'd have to partition it into several pieces to be able to use it all, if it can even allocate the table sizes without a BIOS update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
logicalconfusion Posted January 9, 2013 Author Share Posted January 9, 2013 youre right its weird! Its like it lost the second drive after I formatted both. I'll try what you suggested and re-connecting it. Maybe it'll kick in...thanks for the info Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
logicalconfusion Posted January 9, 2013 Author Share Posted January 9, 2013 Ok. It looks like I can't add the drive that listed in the device manager as new hardware. For some reason XP recognizes that its connected but won't allow me to format it. So, I loaded Hiren's CD in an attempt to format as NTFS, again. Although I can check its specifications, its not available to utilities such as partition magic or fdisk. I dont think its a BIOS issue. The HD appears in the device manager. I think it might be an issue with the MBR/LBA like you suggested. Its drivng me nuts...I can't format a drive that's listed in the device manager...wtf! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
logicalconfusion Posted January 9, 2013 Author Share Posted January 9, 2013 Good Ol' Hiren's bootdisk! It was a formatting issue. As soon as I loaded the WINDOWS version of partition wizard the second drive appeared, with approx 7MB of bs allocated which I will soon wipe with partition magic. Anyway, the drive is working...g2g. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 Yeah, I wasn't talking about device manager, I was talking about Disk Management, which shows drives, some of which can be offline or not formatted, or readable, and you can sometimes wipe them from there, set them as standard disks, primary drives, etc, but if they had funky shit on them like EXT3, they can report the wrong space left on the disk if it was partially paritioned ext3 and the rest left open or set to ntfs, or had a boot loader like syslinux and windows isn't sure where the drive starts. Either way, sounds like you fixed it so thats good to hear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.