2nd hard drive recoginized by BIOS, but not Windows

[geoscomp]

That is true of fdisk..If you can't get the primary drive and the new drive to be seen at the same time, then fdisk won't create an extended partition. You'd need something like Partition Magic to do it. Just how are you jumpering the two drives when you have them hooked up together, and do you have the primary on the last connection and the secondary on the middle connection on the cable?

[sethfp]

Originally posted by geoscomp
That is true of fdisk..If you can't get the primary drive and the new drive to be seen at the same time, then fdisk won't create an extended partition. You'd need something like Partition Magic to do it. Just how are you jumpering the two drives when you have them hooked up together, and do you have the primary on the last connection and the secondary on the middle connection on the cable?

The 2nd hard drive(40GB) is a Western Digital. The system may be refusing to create an extended partition, as it seems the main drive(18GB) already has one. The Fdisk may have been done wrong back when it was first created. The 18GB drive is divided into C and D drives--C reads as 2GB, D reads as being 15GB. (As I recall, the reason for the Fdisk partition was to make it work in an old 200Mhz system, which couldn't read 18GB.) This is even more strange: C drive is empty, and all programs and the OS seem to be on D. Is there a way to remove the partition without losing the info on it? Then it might work to have it recoginize the 2nd drive. Could the 2nd drive be set to E?

[geoscomp]

Other than wiping and re-fdisking and reformatting, you are probably going to have to invest in a program to do what you want. With Partition Magic, for example..you can eliminate the "c" partition, expand the "d" partition to take up that space, and convert it from extended to primary and then mark it as active..there shouldn't be a problem having extended partitions coexisting though..i've got one 4gb primary active and three extended on the main drive and two other drives with 2 logical drives in each extended, but your situation seems a little unusual. Are you absoultely sure there isn't anything on the "c" partition? Did this system ever have a dual boot configuration?

[sethfp]

Originally posted by geoscomp
Other than wiping and re-fdisking and reformatting, you are probably going to have to invest in a program to do what you want. With Partition Magic, for example..you can eliminate the "c" partition, expand the "d" partition to take up that space, and convert it from extended to primary and then mark it as active..there shouldn't be a problem having extended partitions coexisting though..i've got one 4gb primary active and three extended on the main drive and two other drives with 2 logical drives in each extended, but your situation seems a little unusual. Are you absoultely sure there isn't anything on the "c" partition? Did this system ever have a dual boot configuration?

Could the drive be repartitioned to just C, and have the 2nd hard drive be D? Can a hard drive be set on E, and still work?

[geoscomp]

The boot drive works the best as the C drive..and, depending on your motherboard, may need to be the C drive..but logical drives can have any enumeration after that..windows usually sets them depending on it's built in logic controls, and you can sometimes rename drive letters by just deleting a drive, in safe mode, and rebooting, and letting windows reassign..When it does this, it will assign C to the primary master drive, or first partition on the priimary master, and d to the Primary slave. This is assuming both your hard drives are on the primary channel, which is the best way to do it unless you have a controller card, raid setup, etc. So..if you do fdisk your primary drive, to make it all C, or use partition magic to make it all one partition..then it will automatically be assigned as C drive if it is the Primary Master. remember to make it a primary partition, and set it active. Be sure your other drive is set to be the Primary Slave, and if it is an extended partition with a logical drive created in it, then windows will automatically make it the D drive, regardless of how it was showing up before.