Author Topic: Second hard drive not being assigned drive letter (Read 370 times)

osage · « **on:** December 03, 2002, 08:10:42 PM »

I just installed a WD Caviar 40 Gig drive as a second hard drive.

I'm running Win98SE on an ABIT BX6 mobo with an overclocked Celeron.

I configured the jumper on the existing WD CAviar 20 Gig drive to "master" and the new drive's jumper as "slave."

I set the BIOS to autodetect the drives and the BIOS appears to correctly identify the drives, with the old 20 gig as master and the new 40 gig as slave.

But I only see a c: drive and a CD-ROM on e: in Windows (I set the CD-ROM's drive letter to e: in device manager).

How can I FDISK the new drive and get it recognized as drive D?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Osage

SOB · « **Reply #1 on:** December 03, 2002, 08:22:35 PM »

I've got a crazy idea. How about you drop to a dos prompt and type in "fdisk". What a handsomehunk.

SOB

osage · « **Reply #2 on:** December 03, 2002, 08:45:37 PM »

invalid drive specification when I did that

AKS\/\/ulfe · « **Reply #3 on:** December 03, 2002, 08:49:07 PM »

You should try doing that from the Command Prompt...

Press "F8" just before the windows splash screen pops up (right when the floppy disk light comes on) and select "Command Prompt Only" from the list.

Fdisk it from there.

If that doesn't work, put fdisk on a bootable DOS diskette and take your old drive off the chain (just disconnect the IDE cable from it) and fdisk it that way.
-SW

osage · « **Reply #4 on:** December 03, 2002, 09:25:41 PM »

No go on F8 to DOS or the the bootable disk thing or the remove the primary from the chain. I suspect my O/S is deeply porked and I refuse to go through the hell of reinstalling it.

I refuse to dick around with this box any longer. I just discovered a mouse must have been hanging out on my (unused) modem card. It was covered with dried mouse piss and toejam. The little sucker must have been climbing in through the uncovered slots in the back.

I'm gonna build me a loaded P4 sys with RAID mirroring and striping with a Radeon 9700, etc. No more dicking around with a 4 yo sys. The extreme gaming system at Sharkyextreme.com looks like the ticket.

YeeeHaw!

weazel · « **Reply #5 on:** December 03, 2002, 10:26:42 PM »

You might try Seagates SEATOOLS.

eagl · « **Reply #6 on:** December 03, 2002, 10:36:04 PM »

WDDIAG (western digital diagnostics) tool is a free download and will partition and even copy an old HD to a new one if necessary. The download will let you create a boot disk that runs a setup program.

For the mice, I suggest those little poison packets or peanut-butter flavored glue traps, although if you use glue traps you have to dispose of a live mouse that may attempt to bite if it's sick/injured, instead of a dead one.

Leaving a plate or shallow bowl full of beer on the floor can also kill mice as they tend to drink, pass out, and drown in the beer.

osage · « **Reply #7 on:** December 04, 2002, 12:17:22 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
WDDIAG (western digital diagnostics) tool is a free download and will partition and even copy an old HD to a new one if necessary. The download will let you create a boot disk that runs a setup program.

For the mice, I suggest those little poison packets or peanut-butter flavored glue traps, although if you use glue traps you have to dispose of a live mouse that may attempt to bite if it's sick/injured, instead of a dead one.

Leaving a plate or shallow bowl full of beer on the floor can also kill mice as they tend to drink, pass out, and drown in the beer.

The WDDIAG tool (now called lifeguard or something) worked like a charm. I booted from the WDDIAG floppy and first tried the partition and format option to see if I could get a drive letter in Windoze and it worked! Started cloning the old drive to the new drive but realized it was going to take 3.5 hours at UDMA 33 so will do that overnight.

Thanks for the tip!

But I'm afraid of getting drunk, passing out and drowning myself in the plate of beer.

--Osage