2nd Hard Drive Not Recognised

[TBH1]

right - -have just quit out of that memory test thingy - - -had it running for 12 hours or so - - -no obvious errors, well all error counts were zero - -was on test 6, pass 18.

monkey hanger - - -the system restore did work - - but since then, this 2nd hard disc as been AWOL, well AWOL only within windows. BIOS sees it and Disc Fitness test thingy sees it - - - have actually run some other utility on it and it sees the data on it.

Now, of the 101 things it could be, I think I could knoock one or two of them off :-

1. Dodgey ide cable - - - -it was working before the restore but not after - - -this before any 'tinkering'. Plus I am on my 3rd one, surely all 3 wouldn't be duff?? Confident it ain't that.

2.Cable wrong way round - - -see above - - -and believe me have checked and re-checked.

3.BIOS appears correct - -and actually sees the drive on boot up

Now, thats down to 98 - - - -but your last idea of Windows playing silly beggars is probably 'c**k-on' :D

Am gonna now try changing this drive to secondary/slave as suggested above - - -back soon.

[monkeyhanger]

TBH1

I was wondering about system restore. This is usually associated with M.E. ( spit) :rolleyes: and x\p. Unless you have third party software that performs this. :huh:

Has your main drive always been 98. If it has been x\p and the slave was formated in NTFS then you will have no chance of seeing it in windows 98.

But I am sure you said you had 98 on before.

If for some reason the above don't work, you could also try;

Just have the slave hard drive connected, pull out the ide cable from the master hard drive.

Boot to a:\ you may need the windows floppy for this. Change the a:\ to c:\ and type dir. so c:\ dir and see if it lists the directories in dos.

Also at the a:\ you could try fdisk. Just to see the parameters set in option 4. Do not use any other option than 4. You don't want to wipe the data off the disk. :(

[TBH1]

Yep, always had w98se on this beastie. I think I may be getting mixed up with install and restore - - - - -

The system has not been right since re-installing w98se due to problems on the C drive - - -this is not the drive I can't see - - - blimey, duble negatives.The D drive, (this is the drive a can't see) was working OK until then.

I have used fdisk, just as you suggested but with drive still as primary/slave - - - and it can be seen.

I have spent the last 30 minutes rebooting my system trying to catch the exact moby details as have just dl'ed spreadsheet from Microstar - -for your info I have just decoded it to

W6167MS V1.5 122999 - - which means an Award v1.5 dated 29th December 1999 - - - I am sure I have never updated this but gonna have a quick look there now.

And let me say again, thanks for all your time and effort you are putting into this - - - and where's Mr M ?????

[Guest ellas]

ok this may help or may not but reading in the manuel for my harddrive in troubleshooting it says "if no drive letter appears for the drive and no error message was displayed,auto-detect did not locate the drive.enter the BIOS setup and go to harddrive definition menu.select the location which corresponds with where you connected the drive (primary,slave etc).if BIOS setting does not provide an auto capability,the drive parameters must be set by user-selectable and entering the cylinder,head and sector values that correspond to your drive,set the LBA mode to enable for the drive if available and enable DMA mode if available,after drive parameters are entered save and exit the BIOS."

[TBH1]

ellas - - -bin there mate - - - but don't let that put you off, keep em coming.

Have just disconnected cd drives and put secondary/slave onto this drive - - - still beggar all. :smart:

Slight difference is that its listed as type 80 as opposed to type 47 - - - maybe because its on the other channel or something. Going to put everything back now

[Guest ellas]

no access to another machine to test the h/drive,I think its a faulty drive,hopefull y mr mouse will be along soon, hes probaley on edge as his ebay bid for the athlon has only hours to run :)

[TBH1]

no access at all to another one :(

[Guest ellas]

its a long shot but did you find a updated bios,if so may be worth flashing your bios.

[monkeyhanger]

ellas, I agree it is worth a try, said so yesterday

"Your slave hard drive is set as primary slave in the bios and set to auto? You could try setting it to manual, save settings and exit."

This will put the exact parameters in. Trouble is the bios IS seeing the drive.

TBH1

I would have suggested deleting the primary and secondary IDE channels in device manager, rebooting and let windows re find and load them. But as you have had no luck with switching it to the secondary channel, there seems little point.

Have you the capability to do a screen capture of my computer and device manager?

[TBH1]

just had hard discs out - -just so I could check cable connections - - - and the one O bought yesterday, the round one, the middle connection came away in my hand !!! Stuck old one in but still no slave drive .

I've tried deleteing the channels, deleting the controllers, the disc drives - - -

BIOS, as old as it is, id the latest one for my version (1.5)

Gonna find me screen captur stuff now - - have loaded very little back on here, just in case I have to start all over again

To cap it all, the fan on the PSU is a lot louder than it was - - - - ang on, no it ain't, just gone quiet again.

Gonna do a fdisk and write down what supposed to be on this AWOL disc - - -back soon.

[Guest ellas]

heres mine with a h/drive slave

[Agent Smith]

Hi again, I'm back!!! :lol: Been working again this morning, pita I know, but someone has to do it.

Right, lets get this sorted one way or another. TBH1, I would like you to make a windows boot disc (go into control panel, then add/remove programs and select the third tab). Once created, from your windows 98 cd copy the xcopy.exe file (not xcopy32.exe), from the tools>oldmsdos directory on the cd, to your fresh startup disc. There should be enough room, but if not copy to a fresh blank floppy.

Now restart the computer with the floppy disc, it's up to you wether you select cd rom support or not, we won't be needing it. Once booted, you will be at an A:\ prompt. Type in C: and press the enter key, the cursor should change to C:\

At this point type dir and press the enter key. This should list the contents of your c-drive. Now to test the rogue disc. At the prompt type D: (assuming you only have the one partition on the first disc) and hit the enter key. The prompt should now change to D:\

Now type dir /p (note the space after dir and before /) this should list the contents of your second hard drive a page at a time, hit the space bar to move on a page.

If you can see the contents of the drive, we shall try to move them to your c drive. At the prompt type C: and press enter. Now at the C:\ prompt type md olddrive and press enter. This will create a new folder called olddrive on your c drive. You can caal this anything you like, but it needs to be unique and preferrably 8 letters or fewer.

Now type A: and press enter. At the prompt type the following

xcopy d:\*.* c:\olddrive /E /H

please note the spaces between the locations and switches.

If all goes well, this should copy the contents of your d drive to the folder called olddrive on your c drive. Please let us know if this works. We can then get your data properly backed up, and fiddle a bit more with your drives. It will be YOUR resposibility to verify that any copied data is correct and complete.

Regards. Mr. M.

[Agent Smith]

One other point of note. If anyone wishes to read the screens that seem to flash past too quickly at startup, just have your finger ready on the pause key. As the screen you wish to read comes up, hit the pause key (timing may need some practice for this) and the boot should stop at that point. To continue, just hit the enter key.

Mr. M.

[TBH1]

good to see you Mr M - - -

before I do all that, I'm sure I can't see my D drive from DOS, but can via fdisk - -but will try in a minute.

I've just done fdisk thingy again, just to make sure I'm not going completely round the bend :-

Disk 1

Partition Status Type Vol Label Mbytes system Usage

C:1 A Pri-DOS IBM60GB 58643 FAT32 100%

Disk2

Partition Status Type Vol Label Mbytes system Usage

1 A Non-DOS 39253 100%

Does that or does that not say I have a 2nd disc- - - - please say it does !!!

Now, for those screen prints - - -

[TBH1]

thats a good tip Mr M - - - - -rebooted several times this morning just to get BIOS info - - -

another pickie

[Agent Smith]

Hold up TBH1, before you go any further fdisk is reporting your drive as non dos. This is why windows can't see it. Dos won't either.

As asked before are you absolutley sure that you have only had windows 98 on this machine and are you positive that this drive has not had compression software used on it??

Mr. M.

[TBH1]

Absolutely 100% sure - - -and 100% sure when I fdisked at the start of this latest installation, I went nowhere near it. I have something here, somewhere that actually let me see what is on there - - - can't find the begger right now.

[Agent Smith]

Did you ever use the drivespace tool which comes with windows?? This is located in the start>programs>accessories>system tools directory.

It may be worth carefully launching this program to see if it recognises the drive. But be careful, do not let it compress any other drive!!

Mr. M.

[TBH1]

nope - - ain't got one of those.

[Agent Smith]

I would now strongly recommend that you get hold of a copy of Partition Magic. This will tell you exactly what format the drive is in, and if used carefully can convert drives back to FAT. However, at the very least, we need to find out what has happened to the format on your disc.

I will go and have a look and see if I can find a down-loadable demo to try. Post back soon. Mr. M.

[TBH1]

Cheers Mr M - - -thanks for your patience . Gonna sign off for a bit, my daughter needs the phone.

[Agent Smith]

I hope you have broadband TBH1. Powerquest will allow you to download a demo of partition magic, but its 23 mb! Download from here This demo will read the drives but not allow any changes to be made.

At least it's a start. I'm downloading it now to test as well, my working version, albeit a couple of versions oldis in the office.

Mr. M.

[Agent Smith]

Cheers Mr M - - -thanks for your patience . Gonna sign off for a bit, my daughter needs the phone.

Guess that answers my last question then :lol: :D :P

Mr. M.

[Guest ellas]

you probaley will find drivespace in add/remove windows progams and be able to install it from there.

[TBH1]

nope, just bin there - - -it ain't listed. I have defo something here that lsits this stuff on this disc and maybe moves it though last time I used it I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it - - - and it was only maybe Wednesday or Thursday !!