Hard Drive Bootup Problems, Help required - Windows not seeing new hard drive Options

[stueyg]

Hi,

I am in the process of doing a clean re-install of Windows XP for Home on my PC. I have 3 hard drives:

c: 200gb Maxtor SATA drive - bootable with Windows XP (existing Windows install)
d: 20gb Maxtor IDE drive - non bootable data drive
g: 160gb Maxtor IDE drive - bootable with the clean install of Windows XP for home on it

Windows is not seeing all the sizes quite right yet but I will tackle that when I have solved this major problem that follows:

If I boot from the C drive - I have no problems at all. Windows will see all the different drives as it should do, I can access them all and they all work fine.

When I come to boot the clean install on drive G windows changes the drive letters - G becomes C, D remains as D but the 200gb Maxtor SATA drive isn't seen at all and might as well not exist.

Disk Management within Windows is no help as it can't see the drive, Maxtor software MaxBlast 4 is also no help as it can't see the drive on this install either.

I have checked and rechecked the BIOS but have pretty much discounted any issues here as it clearly shows all 3 drives and all 3 drives are listed on boot up. It's just when Windows kicks in that I have the problem.

I guess it's a simple setting somewhere, but I am pulling out what little hair I have left trying to think what it is - so any ideas would be very gratefully received.

Thanks in advance and kind regards

Stuart

 

[Blakhart]

Hi
This is what I would do to enhance performance and storage strategy:

1. Use the 20g for the os and housekeeping utes such as av, spyware, etc only, nothing else goes on that drive.
2. Use the 160g for apps installs.
3. Use the 200g for data.

This might get you past the bios/firmware/os/drive letter issue and make better use of the drives. The 20 isn't really good for storage anymore, but would be great for an os/system ute drive. It's performance is less than the other drives, but that's ok, most of the os will stay in ram anyway after boot, you won't make any real diff having a faster os drive.
You might want to place a pagefile on each drive so pageing can occur concurrently too.

 

[stueyg]

Hi Blakhart,

Thanks for your reply. And yes that was sort of where I was heading with regard to the disk usage after my spring clean.

So anyway, I have just reloaded Windows XP onto the 20gb drive and guess what.....it doesn't see the 200gb drive. Arrrgghhhhhhh!!!

Any further ideas???

Cheers

Stu

 

[Blakhart]

Hi
What are your system specs?
In particular, what does the sata drive connect to? Card? Mobo?
How do you have the pata drives jumpered as?
Are they masters on each channel?
What does bios say about each drive?
Have you checked that each drive is set to auto in bios just for testing purposes?

 

[Ph30nIX]

Make sure you have 48-bit LBA enabled, just google it. Also just after Installing my 500gb Hdd (Sata2) BIOS would recognize it, but windows wouldn't.

I had to use windows disk management to initialize and then format the drive. I think it was in admin tools > comp management. Its worth a try

 

[rover3500]

Make sure your sata drive isn't set as raid in bios,but ide.is in a different place to detected drives...

 

[jhnroy]

it is possible that you're mobo does not support 200GB fully meaning you will either have to limit it or download a utility from the HDD Manufacturers website.

 

[Bravo7]

I have the same problem. ^_^ thanks