Hardware

Ask something
Question Locked

"Raw" HDD in "slave" position not showing: is this normal?

0 helpful
7 replies

by inky960

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

In XP Pro, if my slave drive is totally "raw" - unformatted, if that's the word - is it normal that XP won't show it AT ALL in My Computer, or in Disk Management in the Administrative Tools part of Control Panel?

And, if this is normal, what's the easiest and/or best way to format the "raw" drive?

7 replies

by thechas

First, does the drive show up on the POST screen when you boot up the computer?

If not, you will need to enter BIOS setup and make sure the IDE channel is enabled.

Did you verify the correct jumper settings on your master drive?

Some drives need the jumper set differently for single drive or master with slave present.

If you are using a cable select type cable, make sure the connectors are on the proper drives.

If the BIOS is detecting the new drive properly, it should show up in disk manager as an unknown volume, and the initialize new drive wizard should pop up.

While not as prevalent as it used to be, I do still come across situations where drives from different manufactures do not work well as master and slave.

Chas

by oh smeg

Right now WD Caviar's tend to have a problem when more than one is used. The Slave tends not to be recognized and after much mucking around it will appear for no reason.

So shut down, Remove the Power Lead and make sure that the Jumpers are correctly set and that the Master Drive is at the end of the IDE Lead and the Slave is on the middle connector. After the computer has been off power for about 10 minutes the Drives may be recognized.

If you have added a SATA Drive to this system which already has a IDE Drive fitted but no SATA Drive you need to install the SATA Driver for your M'Board and XP to allow the HDD to be access.

You can then go the Drive Management and format up the drive but you need to install the SATA Driver first as XP doesn't natively support SATA Drives.

Col

by inky960

It turned out that both drives ARE Caviars, one an 80 gig, the other, one I'm just testing, is an old 6.4 gig. My normal slave in that PC is an 80 gig Maxtor. And I can only plead guilty to "mucking around" a little... I double checked the jumper settings, unplugged, replugged, booted, rebooted, and all of a sudden, there it was. I can't explain it, but to say that it wasn't there, now it's there.

Thanks guys. : )

Inky

by Former member

In your "disk manager". All drives (if connected properly) will show in "disk manager" whether they are formatted or not. So if you are having this kind of problem then the best (and first) port of call will be the bios, if the drive(s) are ok and showing in the bios then you should not have any problems. Your drive can be of any size, raw or formatted, and these drives will show up in the bios. Sata drive(s) will need their own drivers to function properly. If the motherboard you have is new then your next update (after Windows) will be the bios update. You will always need to do this to make sure all of the devices that you will be using whether now or later will have no trouble being connected/located in the Windows/Linux software.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

by inky960

Yeah, in Disk Mgr, in XP Pro, I *thought* the disk should show, formatted or not, and that's what led me to post the question to you gurus. ; ) >> Both are IDE drives; the motherboard is a 7 year old dinosaur, one of the first P4s, a RAMBUS board. When new, it was a dream machine, running at 1.8 GHz, WOW! Hehe. And seven years later, it still does anything I ask of it, but of course I don't ask a great deal, by some standards. It does movies okay, handles music, photos, all that. A gig of RDRAM cost me a bundle, but it's like having 2 gigs of DDR, or close. /// Anyway, maybe all that had to do with the weird HDD behavior. Who knows.

Thanks for your kind help.

Inky960

by oh smeg

Only brand of drive that does and it's a nuisance but it happens.

Col

This discussion is closed to new replies.