NT4 W/S doesn't recognize slave drive

I saw this happen with maxtor drives, check to make sure that the master/slave jumpers on the drives are set correctly, if both drives are on the same cable then one should be master and the other slave,

that should do it.
thankyou for the post!..jer

The system partition for NT can't be more than 7.3 GB. Service Pack 4 or greater is needed to access partitions of 8 or more Gig. Even with the service pack installed, first partition can't be more than 7.3 Gig.

To clarify, both hard drives were in the system as primary master and slave. The primary was reformatted and repartitioned, the slave was untouched during install, yet when I run NT, it shows as a 3 partition unformatted disk. Originally it was a single partition (8GB), NTFS disk, fully accessible.

Have you performed a sanity check? Try booting (what was) the slave. Do you have another running NT box to try putting the disk on? Having a disk with a single formatted partition come up as unformatted after a reinstall isn't uncommon. Having it come up as three unformatted partitions is scary.

Before trying the following procedure, make sure your BIOS settings reflect the mode (LBA, Normal, Large) in effect when the disk was originally partitioned and was operating normally.

If the settings are the same or the disk is still inaccessible after changing the settings, then continue with this last-ditch-effort.

This is a destructive procedure -- it will overwrite the partition table and master boot record. The data will not be modified. However, if the procedure does not re-enable access to the drive, the original partition information (which appears now to be corrupt) will definitely be lost.

There is an option in PART.EXE (see below) that will allow you to save the original partition table and master boot record to a diskette.

Download this file and unzip it. Create a DOS boot diskette and put the expanded files on it. Boot the machine with the goofy disk using the boot diskette.

Run PART.EXE and manually remove all the partitions and re-create an NTFS partition that spans the entire drive. Save the changes and reboot NT.

http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/part.zip

You're sure you didn't install the operating system on to the 8Gb partition by accident? You said you had 3 partitions originally on what you think is the primary master? I find it a little too convenient that there are 3 partitions on the drive in question. Remember, in NT, you don't have to install the operating system on to the Primary Master, all that is required is having the boot.ini file on the active partition.

anyway, look into it a little more, and verify this isn't the case.good luck.

Mike

Confused.

1. You did not use the secondary ide, how come NT detect 'secondary' drive.
2. You must have them up and running otherwise how can you format it NTFS.
3. The primary/slave drive is running, how come you insisted it is Not formated by NT??
4. Please be specific on
a) primary IDE
b) Primary partition, Active partition,
c) Secondary IDE (there being no such as 'secondary partition')
d) Extended partition

"drive:" is only historically used as "drive" and should be avoided in this problem case.

I really wish to help and to learn from further on this.
Thanks.

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