Secondary Hard Drive Not Recognized

djelite · October 5, 2001

8) I've reformatted the MAIN DRIVE (C drive several times before just to clean stuff out & I never had this problem before, within WinXP b2600. My SECONDARY HARD DRIVE is recognized in my BIOS and even within Device Manager but not in My Desktop. I've uninstalled the SECONDARY HARD DRIVE in Device Manager, rebooted and it was installed automatically upon bootup. I've never physically opened anything up lately so no wires or anyt6hing else has been touched. The only thing different, program wise, is that I had Roxio RollBack installed previously & working before the clean install was done. I NEED INSIGHT!!!

Intel Desktop Motherboard=D815EPFV

Hard Drives=Maxtor

FatFish · October 5, 2001

Can it be seen in Disk Management?

djelite · October 5, 2001

Yep, It's listed in DISK MANAGMENT

djelite · October 5, 2001

FATFISH: Only options are to DELETE PARTITION, CONVERT TO DYNAMIC DISK and PROPERTIES.

Xiven · October 5, 2001

Oops I was talking rubbish. ;( please ignore this post

FatFish · October 5, 2001

yeah did you assign a drive letter to it in propertis?

djelite · October 6, 2001

FATFISH : Only option highlighted for me to do anything is to DELETE PARTITION & to CONVERT TO DYNAMIC DISK.. The properties tab is the same properties info from Device Manager [my bad!]. Status for the Secondary Hard Drive is "Healthy (Active)" & the type is "Basic".

FatFish · October 6, 2001

um.. i'm not sure what's going on then.. sorry.

djelite · October 6, 2001

FATFISH: THANKS FOR THE ASSIST ANYWAY!

What the heck am I gonna do.....

TheDragon · February 16, 2002

Ack, I have the exact same problem! I have 3 partions, 3 primary; one is linux, one is the boot windows FAT32, and another is a FAT32 with storage space on it. ALl of these partitions are recognized in disk management, but it will not let me give a letter to the storage partition! When I format it with fat32, I can use it and write to it, but when I restart its there but without a drive letter. Right clicking on it in disk management only presents the options "format" and "delete".

Blast!

akoum · February 18, 2002

Have you installed TweakUI from PowerToys for XP? If you have TweakUI open it and if you don't install it. Once you open TweakUI expand the My Computer tree, select Drives and make sure your drives are selected. Make sure the ones without the red (?) are all checked.

I have had the same problem with my drive and this did the trick.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

TheDragon · February 19, 2002

It's not the drive letter showing up, or else I would be able to run the drive letter; its not assigned one by windows. I could easily get windows to assign it a drive letter, but unfortunatley the option is greyed out in disk manager, like some unknown linux partition or something. But the thing is, I formatted it with XP and wrote inside it with XP, but upon reboot its recognized and not assigned a drive letter.

I will look around in tweakXP tho and see if it has any helpful options.

djelite · February 19, 2002

See if you can get EASYRECOVERY and recover the files. This little prog is pretty darn nifty. After I retrieved all files, I reformatted the drive and all was good. Wish there was another way tho....

pimpin_228 · February 19, 2002

bah on fat 32, go ntfs

chan101qua · January 7, 2005

I got the same problem. Norton GoBack messed up my first hard drive, so I have to do a fresh reinstall. Now window XP refuses to assign a letter to my second hard drive, although it show in the Computer Management Console that the drive is Health and active (both are NTFS).

Will try to see if there's any option better than recover files and repartition the hard drive. Windows suck

peterh · January 7, 2005

If a HD does not show on the Desktop then you must have a partition set up and a letter assigned to it. If you cannot assign a drive leter then those drive letters must be re-enabled.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297694

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307079

dsanford1946 · January 27, 2005

I'm running into the same problem about drive letters not being assigned. I had a 40GB primary HD and a 120GB secondary HD using Windows XP. I was able to access and use both drives. I replaced the primary HD with a 250GB HD and reinstalled all original factory installed software and now my secondary HD is not being assigned a drive letter. The BIOS recognizes the secondary HD and the Disk Management part of My Computer recognizes it but no drive letter is assigned. The "change drive leter option" is grayed out and not available for this drive. I tried to follow the link in the previous comment but I don't know how to logon as "Administrator".

I have spent many hours over the past two days trying to solve this promblem but so far no success. As far as I can tell, the only change is the size of the new primary HD. I thought Service Pack 1 solved the problem of large HD.

Please HELP!!! Thanks

FRUSTRATED

pbcguy · January 29, 2005

Same situation as above. I tried Norton GoBack and it froze my computer. In deleting it it messed up the boot record. Took it in for service and just got computer back. Trouble is that my second drive is now not being recognized - it is seen in Disk Management, but I can't assign a letter to it. Any suggestions?

markhsm · February 5, 2005

I have the same problem. I run two HDD. I reinstalled the system (XP) and applications on the system disk. when this was finished, the data hdd could not be seen by Windows explorer, or when using any application to open a file. Computer management can see the disk, including the origional name, but the right click commands are all greyed out except Delete Partition and Help. The disk assignment letter is missing. I have tried the disk in another machine but it is also not recognised.

does anyone have any ideas?

jkristos · February 10, 2005

ok so I went through the thing with Roxio go-back before. It is always the problem if you formatted your primary drive with it still installed as it totally changes things in your master boot record.

anyhow you have to reinstall it with all drives hooked up and they will be recognized then get rid of that piece of junk software (after carefully following the uninstall instructions)

if you have any questions email me jkristos@hotmail,com