Okay this may be easy for the computer guys but I am struggling abit here. I have installed a 2nd 250g hard drive. Both are Western Digital hardrives. I have set the original hard drive as master and the 2nd hard drive as slave. When I go into my computer it shows drive C but not the second drive. Yet when I go into device manager, disk drives it shows them both there.

One is in position 0 and the other as position 1. Any ideas? By the way I am using XP Pro.

Okay this may be easy for the computer guys but I am struggling abit here. I have installed a 2nd 250g hard drive. Both are Western Digital hardrives. I have set the original hard drive as master and the 2nd hard drive as slave. When I go into my computer it shows drive C but not the second drive. Yet when I go into device manager, disk drives it shows them both there.

One is in position 0 and the other as position 1. Any ideas? By the way I am using XP Pro.

hi Selsport,

you might need to format it to FAT32 so Windows can use it, a smart move is to disconnect your existing drive and boot from you windows cd, it will find and format the drive for you (might say call an engineer lol). you can install the sytem to it so if you crash you can be back up and running lot quicker.

anyway after the format stops, reconnect you old drive and see what 'pops' up in my computer.

alternatively you can download a free utility from the WD site to configure the drive for you.

regs

alan

Edited April 9, 200719 yr by arfur mo

you might need to format it to FAT32 so Windows can use it,

Not a good idea. 250GB is definitely best as NTFS.

I've found the problem!

Bill Gates !

Okay this may be easy for the computer guys but I am struggling abit here. I have installed a 2nd 250g hard drive. Both are Western Digital hardrives. I have set the original hard drive as master and the 2nd hard drive as slave. When I go into my computer it shows drive C but not the second drive. Yet when I go into device manager, disk drives it shows them both there.

One is in position 0 and the other as position 1. Any ideas? By the way I am using XP Pro.

What sort of PC is it? Most modern ones use CS (Cable Select) to identify Master & Slave drives.

Was your single drive set to CS by jumper and did you change it?

Are both drives on the same data cable? If so, is one connector grey and the other black, with a blue connector to the motherboard - that's a normal colour scheme for CS cables. In which case Master and Slave might work but both set as CS is best. The "end" connector is usually Master.

To be honest, it's probably got no partitions or is not formatted.

Use Disk Manager to have a look at it and create/format a partition, as follows:

Right-click My Computer and choose "Manage". Computer Management opens.

Click on Disk Management under Storage, you should then see your disks and partitions.

Right mouse click on the new drive and you'll get a menu of valid options. Create a primary partition and format it NTFS, which will take a while.

Also, in Device Manager, what is showing for the Advanced Properties of the relevant IDE Channel under Transfer Mode? UDMA Mode 5 would be reasonable.

Edited April 9, 200719 yr by amateurandy

Okay this may be easy for the computer guys but I am struggling abit here. I have installed a 2nd 250g hard drive. Both are Western Digital hardrives. I have set the original hard drive as master and the 2nd hard drive as slave. When I go into my computer it shows drive C but not the second drive. Yet when I go into device manager, disk drives it shows them both there.

One is in position 0 and the other as position 1. Any ideas? By the way I am using XP Pro.

Go into your BIOS and make the new disk partition "active" then you can use it.

Go into your BIOS and make the new disk partition "active" then you can use it.

You don't need to do that if it's already showing in Device Manager; he's added a whole new drive.

Even worse it could make that new/empty drive the default for booting and he could end up totally stuck.

And actually I'm not sure what you say is quite right - usually you make a partition active in partition management software (like FDISK) not the BIOS?

Not a good idea. 250GB is definitely best as NTFS.

Agreed, there is a 32gb partition size limit for fat32 in windows, it can be partitioned as fat32 with other software, but why bother use NTFS.

I seem to remember somewhere the option to only show certain drive letters, I have tweakui installed and you can do it with that.

You don't need to do that if it's already showing in Device Manager; he's added a whole new drive.

Even worse it could make that new/empty drive the default for booting and he could end up totally stuck.

And actually I'm not sure what you say is quite right - usually you make a partition active in partition management software (like FDISK) not the BIOS?

I added a new drive a little while ago under XP pro and had to......

You can see it in device manager but can't use it.

All BIOS/MBoards are different remember.....

Added.

Thinking "active" may be the wrong termanolgy, I had to turn the drive on in bios after auto detecting it.

Selsport69 you have set the BIOS to auto detect it haven't you? You should do that then make it useable or whatever your BIOS says to make it useable, windows XP will see hardware that the BIOS won't let it use as well.

Edited April 9, 200719 yr by luggsey

Thanks for all your replies. I managed to get it working by doing what amatureandy said. Thanks mate.