Windows XP Home re-installed from the recovery disc.
Both drives subjected to Darik's Boot and Nuke first.
Same drives used as previous.- so working.
"My Computer" recognises C: drive. Does NOT recognise, F: drive.
Both drives show in BIOS.
Device manager does show F; HDD and states both drives are working properly.
No yellow question marks in Device Manager.
New ribbon cabes and another HDD have been tried. No result.
How can F: drive be made to show in "My Computer" please?
Try checking the f: drive in the disk management tool,
(control panel/administrative tools/computer management/storage/disk management)
Here you can see all drives irrespective of their windows registration status. If your drive is not registered, it may be that the master boot record and/or the partition table on the extra HDD is damaged. There are methods of restoring these using free tools, but I have never had to use them like this. Maybe somebody here has more experience of their use.
Hope that helps.
Steve
...New ribbon cabes.....
They are 80-way ribbon cables? (and not 40-way?)
You removed all data from both drives , and re-installed windows on drive C: ?
At what point did you fdisk/format drive F: ?
Steve. Your instructions were followed and all is fine now. Thank you
None of the cables were changed, so yes Mooblie, 80 way ribbon cables.
Gary: Yes, all data removed from both drives by Darik's Boot & Nuke.
Did not F: disk or format F: as F: was not available.
Is another step advisable please?
If you still can't see the second drive , you need to go into disk management , as explained by Steve ( above ) and select the drive , which will have no letter or format info
right click on the drive , format it , then assign a letter to it ( f: in your case )
If you can see the drive in ''my computer'' , you have done all you need to.
All clear Gary, Thank you. Following Steve's posting cleared that.
I was just asking you if I had missed anything I should have done earlier - so that the problem would not have arisen.
All clear Gary, Thank you. Following Steve's posting cleared that.I was just asking you if I had missed anything I should have done earlier - so that the problem would not have arisen.
If the drive isn't formatted , it won't be seen by windows.
The bios sees it as a physical unit , and reads the capabilities from the Harddrives firmware.
But it can't do anything until it is formatted.
Les,
I wrongly assumed that you had data on the f: drive that you wanted to keep if possible. I presume that Darik's 'Boot and Nuke' will erase any drive then. If you did want to try and salvage any data, there are methods of repairing the Master Boot Record and the partition table, but (touch wood) I haven't had to resort to them yet.
So all seems well now.
Steve
Thanks both Gary and Steve. The described method worked well.
Hadn't realised about format Gary. I did think of that when the problem arose but couldn't format the drive as it couldn't be seen to format. Only showed in BIOS.