Windows won't recognize hard drive

[gartht799]

Hi,

I have the following system:

Intel 3.0 Ghz processor with HT
2.0 GB SDRAM
Two hard drives (One Western Digital 30 IDE and one Maxtor 80 GB serial)
ABIT IC7-G Motherboard
Windows XP Home Edition


I loaded windows on my pc and everything appears to be okay except that my second hard drive (80 GB Maxtor) is not being shown in explorer. When I go into the system managment and check under the device maanger it is listed under drives along with my 30 GB HD and my 250 Zip drive, so it appears to be recognized, just not showing up in explorer, so I can't use it.

Before installinng windows to my 30 GB HD I tried to install it to the 80 GB drive. When I formatted the drive, it got all the way out to 100% but would not restart to install windows. The drive is recongized in the Bios so I know that is okay. One other thing is that I partiioned my 30 GB drive into three seperate drives so I have a "C", "D" and "E" listed for that. Any help as to why my 80 GB drive is not showing up is appreciated. Thanks

 

[Tommy Boy]

You need to format it again. Put the maxblast cd into your drive and that will allow you to format it...or partition magic will work too.

 

[Kage]

Hmm, I've never heard of MaxBlast, and if gartht799 doesn't have Partition Magic, hes pretty stuck... luckily though, you shouldn't need any of those programs:

Your Windows isn't being ran from the 80gb drive, so you should be able to reformat it from within Windows.

So open up where you had the drives listed under Drive Management and right click the 80gb drive and select to format it.

Restart and hopefully it'll see it. BIOS would see an unformated drive too you see, buit windows would'nt.

I hope this helps

 

[gartht799]

I am going under system, hardware and then device manager but I don't see any Drive Management. If I go under the device manager and right click on any of the disk drives, all that comes up are options to uninstall and then properties. If I click on properties all it tells me is that the device is working properly. No options on formatting.

 

[Kage]

Right, to get to that, go to the desktop and right click the My Computer icon, or you may be able to do this from the start menu and right clicking on My Computer if it isn't on the desktop, and go to "Manage"

When the window comes up, they'll be a list on the left.

Go down to Disk Management and click it.

Now, you'll have the hard drives in boxes on the right. You should be able to select the 80gb one that can't be found through windows and right click that and go to "Format".

I hope this works

 

[wozelbeak]

go to controll panel, then admiastrive tools, then computer managment, then disk managment. you can format from there i think.
but not your main hdd, be careful.
woz

 

[Kage]

Ah yeah, thats the other way to get to it.

Don't worry, I know for sure it won't let you wipe the drive your using I don't think Format is selectable if you try to do so.

 

[wozelbeak]

yes, i think it denies you if you try.
woz

 

[Kage]

Yep, thought so.

Hopefully that'll work, but sometimes this happens to USB drives as well, but definietly shouldn't be happening with hard drives.

It can't do any harm anyway.

 

[Tommy Boy]

Hmm, I've never heard of MaxBlast, and if gartht799 doesn't have Partition Magic, hes pretty stuck... luckily though, you shouldn't need any of those programs:

Your Windows isn't being ran from the 80gb drive, so you should be able to reformat it from within Windows.

So open up where you had the drives listed under Drive Management and right click the 80gb drive and select to format it.

Restart and hopefully it'll see it. BIOS would see an unformated drive too you see, buit windows would'nt.

I hope this helps

maxblast is the software that comes with maxtor hard drives to format them. if you have that cd and put it in the drive it will recognize the drive and format it for you