BleepingComputer.com: 2nd Hardrive

Hello, my old sony vaio crapped out on me over the weekend. I purchased a new box and removed the HD out of the Sony (seagate) and put it in the new box in order to transfer files. I removed the jumper on the Seagate to make it a slave.

The seagate shows up on bootup (as a slave) and in the system descriptions, but not in windows explorer. The new box has Vista home premium operating system.

I also ran Seagate's SeaTools and the drive shows up there and passed all tests.

What do I need to do for windows explorer to recognize the new drive?

Thanks

Mark

right click my computer>manage

in the left-hand payne select disk management.

what does it say?

goodluck

edit:spelling

If the drive shows up in the BIOS...and in Disk Management within XP...but not in My Computer/Explorer...you probably need to change the drive letter assigned.

I don't know if taking the jumper off was the right thing to do. How is the drive connected? Try putting the jumper to reflect a CS setting, drives come from the factory at CS (default) for the last 4 years or so. The old 40-pin cables had problems with that, but no IDE wire purchased in the last 5 years or so would have problems with the CS setting.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/50099-32-cables

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/cabling/deskstar4.htm

The only time today where I would bother with Master/Slave...when using an enclosure for converting an IDE drive to USB connector. The manufacturers of those cases seem to prefer a Slave setting often, rather than CS and the drive won't be recognized properly unless the jumper is set to the specified setting.

Louis

Thanks,

It has no volume letter, the layout is simple, the type is basic, nothing is listed under file system, the status is Healthy (active, primary partition.

XP will not see it until a letter is assigned. Letters are the way in which Windows identifies partitions/drives. A partition drive doesn't have to have a name, but it must have a letter assigned in order for Windows to recognize/use it.

Use Disk Management to assign one (not already assigned to another installed drive).

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Disk-manage...-XP-31331.shtml Third item.

Louis

Louis, the operating system on the new box is Vista Home Premium. The Seagate drive came out of a box using XP Home.

In disk management, under the action menu, the only thing that is not grayed out is delete volume.

Another thing, disc capacity is listed as 111 GB and the amount free is listed as 111 GB. I'm pretty sure that it is at least a 2 GB drive.


Mod Edit: Merged back-to back post into 1.

Well, I don't have Vista, but I haven't seen anything that says that Disk Management is significantly different than it is in XP.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvista...lettervista.htm

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/506/vista_x...e_drive_letters

If the volume is listed as 111...and there's no drive letter assigned...I would have to conclude that there's nothing on the drive.

I should have keyed on this earlier, forgive me...but...everything reported in Disk Management indicates that this drive is not formatted and has no partition. That could mean that the drive really has no partition...or that the drive has problems.

If you compare it to the data reflected for the other drives in your system (reflected in Disk Management), you will see what I mean.

The fact that the drive reflects an Active marker really means nothing, other than the fact that someone prepared it to be a system/boot drive at some time. The only way that I have found to eliminate this marker (when I've moved a drive from system/boot to just a data drive) is to deleted everything on the drive and format/partition it.

I guess that I really don't know any more to tell you...you need to check the drive out somehow.

And that curious comment about 2GB...2GB for an operating system does not work if we are talking about XP.

Another thought hits me...when you ran the Seagate utility, you may have done a low-level format inadvertently, which may account for these seeming anomalies.

I just don't know.

Louis

Louis, thanks for thinking of me.

The drive is actually a 120 GB drive, my bad. There should be some space on it though.

I ran Seagates Seatools, but not the advanced test that stated that data could be lost. I ran all the other tests though.

One other thing. I checked the bios and this drive is coupled with the DVD R/W rather then the master harddrive. Could I have plugged the wrong ribbon connector in it?

Yes, I know that the stated capacity is 120, but only 111 is useable . I have a few 120GB drives myself. The 120 figure doesn't matter because XP will only reflect the actual useable space, which is 111.

I don't know why no file system is reflected. That and the fact that the drive reads as 111 useable make me believe that XP sees nothing on it other than an Active marker.

I've found that placement of drives in 2007 is no issue, as it might have been 10 years ago. That was then...

The only way (I know of) an optical drive would have any impact is if you placed the hard drive on a connection that was formerly/recently used by the optical drive. It's likely that the drive would not operate at its optimal DMA until you did a registry edit to correct that (known problem)...but it would have no recognition problems and it would operate.

I feel like I'm repeating myself, but...the Last Desperate Guess...check the jumper settings on all drives. Really, they should all be C/S, but some still believe in the Master/Slave thing. Point is, drives on the same cable must be one or the other...cannot have one drive set at C/S, while the other is Master or Slave.

Louis

You might want to try one of the USB convertors for HDs. I have one that I got on ebay for about $15 that works on IDE and SATA. Then you should be able to plug it into your USB port and be recognized.

Good luck.

DR

Ok, I put the jumper back in and now windows explorer recognizes the drive, but only 9.6 GB and says that it need to be formated.

The funny thing is that it no longer shows up in the bios at bootup.

Seagates Seatools still passes it.

I guess at this point I need to take it back out and see if someone can get the data off of it.

check to see that you didnt "limit drive to 32gb"

sorry i may have mis-read, but it was a tad unclear as to what is showing in disk-management....

All of this depends on why the old computer died

If it was due to the hard drive, then there's a chance that the data may not be easily recoverable.

If it was not due to the hard drive - then there's hope for easily recovering the data. Since the slaving of the drive didn't work out too well for you - I'd have to recommend a USB enclosure for doing this.

Also, I'd recommend something like the BartPE boot disk ( http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ ) to see if you can even access the drive on that level. Quite often (at work) we can't access the contents of a hard drive until we venture into PE mode. If using PE mode, you'll have to have the USB device plugged in and turned on when you reboot - otherwise the PE mode won't recognize the USB device.

I normally leave my computer on at night. I came into the office and the led lights were flashing on and off. I tried rebooting but the same thing happened.

The first thing that I tried was a USB enclosure and it basically was identified the same way as it does in the box. Explorer does not recognize it. So I thought I would mount it and see if that made a difference. It did not.

I assume that there is some form of functionallity left in the hard drive or Seagates diagnostic utilities would not have passed it. Is that correct.

If it's a Seagate drive and you ran the proper utility (long test), chances are that the results are accurate.

Of course, nothing is certain with anything as sophisticated as a computer system .

Louis