winXP install issues...

crazyhorse · #1 06-18-2003, 04:41 PM

i just installed winXP Pro. i have following config:

Nforce 2 motherboard
AMD Athlon 2400+ Xp CPU
1024 MB DDR PC2700
primary master: HDD--western digital 20 Gig
primary slave: second HDD, fujitsu 19.8 Gig (is still FAT32, :-(
secondary master: Pioneer DVD-ROM drive
secondary slave: SONY CD-RW drive.

After POST boot-up, all four drives r recognized as IDE drives, but for some reason, after XP loads, the second (slave/FAT) drive does not show up anywhere.
as an XP newbie, i'd appreciate any guidance on how to access the second HDD, since it contains all my data, music, pictures, home movies, etc.

rgds,
crazyhorse

lewis · #2 06-18-2003, 07:00 PM

Do you have the jumpers on the HDs set properly?

Which Nforce drivers are you using? There are issues with the 2.41/.42's.

Try reverting to the old 2.03s. Here

Does the second drive show up in the 'Device Manager'?

crazyhorse · #3 06-19-2003, 09:41 AM

dear lewis:
thx for the reply.
1. yes, i have my jumpers set properly.
2. haven't tried reverting to old drivers...
3. funny thing--the second HDD does show up in device manager and says "this device is working properly".
will let u know if reverting to old nForce drivers worked...

rgds,
crazyhorse

snowmonkey · #4 06-19-2003, 02:34 PM

you could try this.
right click on you my computer, go to "Manage" / Disk Manager and see if any drive letter is assigned to your Data Drive (FAT), if not you will not be able to see it.

cheers

crazyhorse · #5 06-20-2003, 12:37 AM

dear snowmonkey,
u r right!! there is no drive letter assigned to my fat 32 drive.
so how do i work around it?

rgds.
crazyhorse

crazyhorse · #6 06-20-2003, 12:39 AM

dear lewis,
i installed the 2.03 drivers (NFORCE), but it's still the same situation. everything works fine, but there's no drive letter assigned to my FAT 32 drive, so it doesn't show up. dunno waht to do... :-(

rgds.

snowmonkey · #7 06-20-2003, 12:59 PM

As I said before: right click on you my computer, go to "Manage" / Disk Manager the you can see all you hard drives on the right side of the screen,, chose the drive that does not have drive letter, right click on it , go to property, then you can create a new volum , which will add your drive letter

cheers

crazyhorse · #8 06-20-2003, 04:13 PM

SNOWMONKEY WROTE: "chose the drive that does not have drive letter, right click on it , go to property, then you can create a new volum , which will add your drive letter"

Dear snowmonkey,
i tried this... but the necessary options r NOT HILIGHTED/disabled for this disk.
the other disk is fine.
pls advise.

rgds.

njovin · #9 06-21-2003, 12:51 AM

I've seen this happen before. When you are in disk managent, you want to right click on the drive and click "Change Drive Letter and Paths". Then simply assign the drive a letter (to be safe, choose something high like N

. If that doesn't work, try selecting the option "Mark Partition as Active" vefore you assign a letter.

llrand · #10 06-21-2003, 05:42 AM

If your second hd shows but you are unable to access it, it appears that you just might have a cabling problem - purchase a new enhanced ide drive cable (ata 133) and connect your drives using it - also - re your secondary ide master/slave - it has been observed that most cd-rw drives must be installed as the master drive.
Hopefully this might correct your situation.

crazyhorse · #11 06-22-2003, 02:27 PM

dear all,
thanks for the great tips and support. i have solved this problem in an unorthodox fashion:
first, i removed all non-system data from my primary drive and partitioned it, leaving about 15 Gigs free. then i used this great tool called GetDataBack for FAT (from Runtime Technologies, they also have a NTFS version) that allows u to retrieve data from drives that windows doesn't recognize. i kept backing up data on to my primary drive and burning them off. slowly, the slave drive was completely copied and i retrieved every last byte of data from it.
next, i right-clicked My computer, went to manage/disk management, said "Delete Partition". then "create partition" and lo and behold, XP first formatted it in NTFS and then asked me what drive letter and volume label i wanted assigned to it. after assigning appropriate drive and volume name, i rebooted and now i have the 2 drives working as they were be4 when i was running win2KPro, with no changes in hardware settings.

best rgds,
crazyhorse/not Neil Young