How do I add a second HD on XP

[hook2]

I recently bought a new 40g HD and want to use it as a second HD next to my old 20g. I wiped out my system completely using fdisk and repartitioned and formatted both drives. However, XP only shows my master drive and says that it cannot access the other drive. I don't know how to get that second HD recognized. Also, I did not partition my drives using NTFS, should I have used that rather than FAT 32? Just looking for a little help. Thanks

 

[Kahuna]

slave

How did you set up your Hard drive?

I would imagine they are both on the same IDE cable running off your first IDE Channel.

Taking that into account make sure your first HD ( usually plugged in at the end of the IDE cable) is set to "Master" and your second harddrive (usually plugged in on the middle of the IDE Cable) is set to "slave" Some harddrives have them little pictures depicting how the jumpers need to be setup.

After you do that make sure you go into your BIOS and detect all your IDE devices.

If I was you I would use your 40Gig as the "master" since as you said its a newer drive. It might be faster.


I myself prefer NTFS on my XP box but I am not running dual boot. If you ever plan on running Win98 on the same machine you are better off with FAT32.

 

[hook2]

Thanks

Thanks Kahuna, I do have it set up the way you described with the 40g as master. When my computer boots up, it detects both drives fine, but Windows shows no sign of the 20g drive. I tried to use partition magic but when I try to get to that drive it says that it cannot access that drive. Windows doesn't show a drive letter for it either...like it doesn't exist.

 

[Kahuna]

You have the 20 gig drive jumpers set up Slave correct?

If it still does not work try this, If your slave drive is on the middle connector of the IDE Cable set the jumpers to Cable Select. Do not change anything with your Master drive its obviously working fine.

I know sounds strange but it actually worked once for me.

 

[dreamliner77]

you might want to try going to hard disk properties in Device Manager and manually assigning a drive letter to the drive. I had this same prob about a month ago installing a new drive. That took care of it fine.

 

[Kahuna]

You can also look at your HD health and change drive letters by doing the following.

Click Start , click Control Panel ,

Click Administrative Tools ,

click Computer Management

Than select Disk Manager under the Storage Tree.

Its got a wealth of useful tools.

 

[hah2k]

Did u format both drive with the same file systems, like fat32 or ntfs. Not 1 ntfs and the other fat32, it won't work.

 

[hook2]

Everything is setup correctly (ie. jumpers, BIOS etc.) The problem I have is that even in Disk manager my 20g drive doesn't exist. The computer shows that it is a maxtor drive when I boot up initially, and it does show it in the Device manager in hardware, it says it is working properly, but I cannot seem to access it to give it a drive letter.

 

[hook2]

Both Fat 32

Yeah, both are formatted under FAT 32. I can't figure out what is wrong.

 

[Kahuna]

Actually you can have both NTFS and FAT32.

I have 3 drives setup main is NTFS the other two are FAT32.

Not sure what is left to do.....

Try putting it on another IDE channel see if it comes up.