Hardware

Ask something
Question Locked

SATA drive has no drive letter and is not seen in Windows XP

0 helpful
8 replies

by jackthehat2003

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

Hi,
After a disk crash I rebuilt my PC loading all the software from scratch.
Now I find that my single SATA drive does not appear in Windows Explorer.
If I look for it in disk management I can see it, all that is missing is a drive letter. If I right click, I get the option to "delete the partition" or "help", all other options are grey'd out.
In device manager there are no warnings or question marks.

Does anyone know what button I have to press or icon I have to click to get Windows to see the drive ?

The drive is a Maxtor 300gb 150, MoBo is ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, OS is XP SP2

Thanks
Jack.

8 replies

by w2ktechman

Or are you booting from it?

If it is a slave drive you swill need to partition/format before assigning a drive letter.

by jackthehat2003

Hi,
no I'm not booting from it, I just use it for storage. It isn't a new drive and was working on my PC before the crash. So it has already been formatted and has 279gb of data on it - mostly MP3 files and photos so I'd rather not delete the partition. I can see the drive in "computer management", it tells me that it is healthy, active and on line - I just can't access it through windows.

by locolobo

In Disk management have you tried right clicking on the drive and select "change Drive Letter"? What happens when you do?

by w2ktechman

If I read everything correctly, you cannot assign a drive letter (greyed out), and Windows does not see it except in device manager and disk management.

It is a second drive(storage) with files. Interesting problem. Could the drive have been damaged when installing the new drive?

Have you tried any recovery SW on it?

what happens if you boot to NTFS DOS boot disk (read only is free). Does it see the drive? Does it see the files?

by jackthehat2003

Hi,
thanks all for the replies.

I tried the NTFS boot disk and couldn't see it, just the other IDE drives.
With your comment on SW recovery, I remembered that I previously had Norton Goback loaded on my PC so I reloaded it and hey presto, my lost SATA drive reappeared in Windows !
I'm not sure what Norton GB had to do with it but obviously something.
Anyway, all seems fine now, thanks !

by ic-it

Nice to hear. Now we will have to remember to use a sector editor to check the partition table. That solution never crossed my mind.
Partition Magic has the editor too ;-)

This discussion is closed to new replies.