Un Mark Partition as active

Hi
I had two hard disks installed to my computer'

Hard Disk 1: XP Os installed disk is partitioned to 4 logical drives (80GB/4)
Hard Disk 2roblem occured hard drive partitioned to 2 logical drives (80GB/2)

i format a 2nd hard drive using xp disk management process and this is not the os installed partition.so as a mistake i mark one partition in disk 2 as Active.

after rebooting that 2nd Hard Disk didn't appear

how can i see that hidden drives

thanks

duminda

 

There is nothing wrong with having a partition marked active, in fact it's a good idea to do so just in case you ever want to install an OS on it. You are only allowed one active partition on any HD.

I'm unclear as to whether you have two or three HD's now. When you formatted the drive, did it give any indication of errors? Can you see it in Disk manager now? If so, delete the partition you created and create it again. Then format again and hope.

If you cannot see it in Disk manager, reboot and enter the BIOS setup and see if it shows up there. If not, you may have a bad HD. Download and run the manufacturers diagnostics for it:

HD Diagnostics

 

You can try running diskpart from a command line and see if that drive is accessible. You can even set it inactive if you desire. Open a command session and type the following commands pressing enter after each:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK n (where n is the number of the drive in question)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the active partition you wish to make inactive)
INACTIVE
EXIT
EXIT

Reboot

Caution, be sure you are working on the correct drive as you could render your system unbootable.