[RESOLVED] Win98 not detecting second hard drive

[RVD]

I added a second hard drive to my computer and the bios is set, but windows98 won't detect it when I use "add new hardware" from control panel. I manually tried to search for it but Win98 doesn't list "hard drives" or "hard disks" in the list where it asks you to choose from. It does list "hard disk controllers" but thats not what I need. BTW, it is a 1gig NEC drive and it is set as the slave, my primary drive -of course- is the master.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[alioops]

have you fdisked the new hard drive from the dos prompt to set up the partition?? After that you have to format the drive, but that can be done from windows or dos...

[um]

Its the drive out of my older computer and it
has windows95 and other junk on there. It was formatted before anything got on there, but I figured it didnt need to be reformatted again so ill lose all the crap thats on it. My bios in my current computer detects it and its configured properly but win98 does not detect any new hardware and wont let me manually install it in win98.

[alioops]

okay, so formatting and fdisking is out of the question. how about checking the status from fdisk to see how it detects in there.If you check from fdisk, just make sure that you check the disk, and don't delete partitions or anything. Also, does the bios in your current system detect the hard drive with the same settings as in your old system? You know, the same cylinders, heads, etc?

[This message has been edited by alioops (edited June 07, 1999).]

[Steve Zap]

If it already has a partition set up (Which you say it does) then it is strictly a hardware problem (Or hardware SETTINGS problem).

Ali is correct that the Block size may be set incorrectly. All HD manufacturers I have seen print the Heads/Cylendars/Tracks On the label on their HDs. Use these numbers to manually type the figures into your BIOS if it isn't already correct.

The Add New Hardware wizard in Windows will not do anything when installing a hard drive. All you will see in device manager is the hard drive controller. If/when Windows knows you put in a new Hard Drive, it will not notify you whatsoever. It will simply add another drive letter to "My Computer."

Try running FDisk, using ONLY option 4 and 5 !!!!!! (The others are there to edit partitions which WILL delete everything on your drive) Option 4 will allow you to display the partitions on your current hard drive. 5 Will let you change to another drive. If it does not give you option 5, then your computer's hardware is not telling the software another drive exists. This points strictly to your BIOS or IDE Controller. Again, if your HD settings for Heads/etc... are correct, then your only option is to try the secondary controller for your second HD. Make the second drive Master on the Secondary controller. Try all of the above steps again. If you still get no results you will need to replace some hardware.

Good Luck !
-Steve Zap

[Giles]

Some of the old drives cannot be recognized by the BIOS on bootup because they are too slow. You might try rebooting without shutting the computer off. If this is it, then you will have to reboot everytime to give the old hard drive time to cycle up. Some BIOS have a setting to delay detecting the hard drives for this very purpose.

[stevet]

Do you happen to have a drive overlay on this old drive? I have had problems before similar to yours. If one of the hard drives in your system has Disk Manager or EZ-Drive installed and the other one doesn't, it might cause a problem. If this is the case, then uninstalling the overlay from the old drive could take care of your problem.

Steve

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