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Missing Hard Drive
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jjslim
Newbie
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26. September 2004 @ 10:53 |
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I have two 80GB hard drives installed on my computer. I recently had to reinstall windows. Once I reinstalled windows xp sp2 my second drive does not show up under my comptuer. It shows up in the disk management but it is not assigned a drive letter and the option to assign it a letter is grayed out. I know the drive still works though. I downloaded a program called Stellar Pheonix FAT & NTFS scan and it can scan the drive.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Jarrod
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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26. September 2004 @ 11:42 |
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You probably did not make it active when you installed it initially........
Go back into the disk management window and right click on your HD, it should give you that as an option to make the partition active.
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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jjslim
Newbie
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26. September 2004 @ 12:15 |
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that option is grayed out. it says it is healthy and active currently... just no drive letter.
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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26. September 2004 @ 13:08 |
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Is it set at the back correctly (Master/slave etc for both drives)?
Does the BIOS see the drive ok?
Is the cable a 40 way or 80 way?
And is it a good cable?
Are there any system files on it, or is it just used as storage?
Can you remember assigning a drive letter/name when you installed it originally?
Are you in a position to reformat it through windows and making a new partition etc?
Does it show up in device manager?
If it does it maybe worthwhile uninstalling it and rebooting, let windows find it again, see if this helps.
Also you could uninstall the IDE controller in device manager and reboot and see if this brings it back.
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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ianski7
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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26. September 2004 @ 13:15 |
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Hey,
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ianski7
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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26. September 2004 @ 13:16 |
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Sorry, nervous finger!
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jjslim
Newbie
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26. September 2004 @ 17:11 |
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Is it set at the back correctly (Master/slave etc for both drives)? dunno... but it worked before the reinstall
Does the BIOS see the drive ok? yes
Is the cable a 40 way or 80 way? not sure
And is it a good cable? should be, it was working fine.
Are there any system files on it, or is it just used as storage? storage
Can you remember assigning a drive letter/name when you installed it originally? i did not install it
Are you in a position to reformat it through windows and making a new partition etc? i dont really want to if i dont have to.
Does it show up in device manager? yes
If it does it maybe worthwhile uninstalling it and rebooting, let windows find it again, see if this helps. tried that.
Also you could uninstall the IDE controller in device manager and reboot and see if this brings it back. tried that also
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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26. September 2004 @ 22:15 |
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So, even though it is all registering with device manager etc.
It is not shown up in windows explorer.
This is normally the case when the partition is not active, but as you say it displays healthy, active by it....................
What happens if you right click on the drive in drive management, you should get a load of options including open and explore, what happens if you click on explore or open?
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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Senior Member
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27. September 2004 @ 03:11 |
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Hey
Try opening My Computer then going into Control Panel.
Select Administrative Tools, then Computer Mangement.
Now on the left hand side click on Disk Management, if the drive shows up in there, Right Click on it up the top, then Select Change Drive Letter / Path.
Click Add and give it a drive letter... see if that works.
CJC
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jjslim
Newbie
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27. September 2004 @ 05:24 |
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Quote:
It shows up in the disk management but it is not assigned a drive letter and the option to assign it a letter is grayed out.
Thanks, but I've already tried that also...
Any other suggestions?
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Senior Member
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27. September 2004 @ 05:39 |
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By any chance do you have anything like GoBack installed ?
Does the 2nd hdd have any windows files on it, or is it just data?
Make sure that the drive is set to 'Slave' and the Primary as 'Master' instead of 'Cable Select' if its on it.
CJC
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jjslim
Newbie
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27. September 2004 @ 07:18 |
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By any chance do you have anything like GoBack installed ? As a matter of fact, I had just got done installing Norton System Works on my system when it completely bombed. So i'm guess GoBack is still on the second drive.
Does the 2nd hdd have any windows files on it, or is it just data? just data
Make sure that the drive is set to 'Slave' and the Primary as 'Master' instead of 'Cable Select' if its on it. How do I do this w/o the manual to the drive?
CJC
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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27. September 2004 @ 09:48 |
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Quote:
What happens if you right click on the drive in drive management, you should get a load of options including open and explore, what happens if you click on explore or open?
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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jjslim
Newbie
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27. September 2004 @ 12:16 |
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sorry, missed that... those options are also grayed out. the only option that is available is "delete partition"
Thanks,
Jarrod
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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27. September 2004 @ 14:04 |
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I have to be honest, I am not really sure what the problem is but a possibility is that the Master boot record is screwed, and this would actually mean that the HD cannot initially load up.
I believe there is a fix within the recovery console (On your XP disc), which should not affect the files that are contained on it.
However I have never actually used the feature.
I think you should be able to go onto the Microsoft website OR google and pull off some information regarding it, as I believe it is a simple fix if the MBR of the HD is messed up.
As I say, I have never used that feature so as to how good it is I don't really know.
Have a look anyway, and if I can locate anything relevant I shall post it.................
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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Senior Member
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27. September 2004 @ 15:35 |
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You can get a fresh copy of the MBR by booting onto a Windows Start-up Disc.
then go 2 the letter of the drive eg D:/> and type fdisk /mbr
Whilst you are on the start-up disc, go back to the A:/> and type fdisk, then go into Option 4, Parition Information or something like that, does it show both hard drives in there ?
CJC
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jjslim
Newbie
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28. September 2004 @ 11:49 |
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Is there a way to make the start up discs on a CD... I dont have any floppys.
Thanks,
Jarrod
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Senior Member
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28. September 2004 @ 13:40 |
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Hey
You can make a bootable CD
http://www.bootdisk.com/nero.htm
It should tell you all u need to know how to make a bootable CD then try the fdisk /mbr once you have booted from it.
CJC
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kc8gaz
Newbie
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6. October 2004 @ 18:33 |
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I have lost my second hard drive when I reinstalled my xp. Just the same thing as what im reading. Tried many of the same things and still nothing using the computer now but want my file off D if I can. Please if you get yours fixed can you tell me how you did it?
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jjslim
Newbie
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7. October 2004 @ 11:14 |
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well i fixed the problem... all i had to do was turn on "S.M.A.R.T. Hard Drives" on in my BIOS and it worked. So I dunno what exactlty hat does but it brought back my drive.
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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7. October 2004 @ 22:07 |
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Nice to see you got it sorted.....
I have to admit that is new one on me, and something I did not think about.....
The SMART feature is a self monitoring analysis reporting technology function.
I think this does impere performance but I have never had to enable it....
I have Maxtor Hard drives (80Gb Prim, 160Gb Sec) and XP (SP2) and do not use SMART.
What hard drives are you using, because it is certainly something to look out for in the future - thanks for the feedback aswell, because I would assume this may also be the route of other members issues.........well done.........
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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jjslim
Newbie
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8. October 2004 @ 06:16 |
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They are Maxtor 6L080L4's. Thanks for the explanation of what SMART is. I was wondering what it was when I enabled it. I'm just glad it somehow fixed the problem.
Thanks for all the help again,
Jarrod
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baabaa
AfterDawn Addict
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8. October 2004 @ 10:08 |
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Yep, they are the similar build model to mine, but mine do not require that SMART enabled with my system.
I have XP and SP2 aswell......strange......
I think I will have a look into this as it has got me intrigued.....
My first thought is maybe a BIOS issue/your motherboard and a possible conflict with XP SP2 and your motherboard.
The other thing (if you can) is reset your DMI settings in your BIOS, then do a clean boot and see if it works out......
However, if you have it working, no reason to play around with it unless you can safely......
I shall post if I come across anything more.......
...............PIO is no go, DMA all the way...............
Beware of the Pixies - they move in over night and turn your life upside down
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SirFrench
Newbie
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11. October 2004 @ 13:02 |
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SMART has a massive impact on system performance, seems weird that it needed to be enabled when it causes a hinderance to system performance I personally have never used it either due to it causing disk spin lag, but know people that have experimanted... and then turned it off again!
I run XPPro SP2, and had issues with my 2nd HD not being recognised in windows before i switched to RAID, after much investigation it turned out that the reason XP didn't like it was that it was formatted in FAT and not NTFS.
Microsoft seem to like phasing out technology without telling anyone!!
Just out of curiosity JJSlim, has it made much difference to data retrieval speed on your HD?
Athlon XP 2000 T-Bred OC'd to 2200 (1813mhz)@145mhz
Gigabyte KVT700 1394
Akasa AK795 XP3200+ copper base HS
512mb Samsung PC2100
Nvidia GeForce4 MX440 128DDR
160Gb(4 x ST340014A 40Gb)
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jjslim
Newbie
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11. October 2004 @ 13:31 |
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I haven't done any tests or anything like that, but now that you mention it my system has been running considerably slower then before. I may try disabling SMART and seeing if my HD still shows up.
~JJ
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