Slave hard drive no show on My Computer

I am running a 1.8 gig processor with 512 RAM and a 40 gig master hard drive. I installed a 2nd 40 gig hard drive as a slave. The system shows it in the Bios and in Devices but it does not show up when I click on "My computer" Any advice on why it doesn't show up in "My computer" and how I can get it to show up. I'm running Windows 2000.

Roger Hoyt

 

Roger Hoyt,

One has to be set to master, the other to slave.

Are you sure you have the jumper on it set correctly for being a slave drive? If the little plastic thing is set just one set of pins over the wrong way on either side of where it needs to be, Windows won't see it.

 

sry if thies seems like a stupid question for troubleshooting, but has the second drive been partitioned?

i know i have done things like that

check the computer managment mmc also see if it is in there.

 

I set the jumper as a slave, however, there seemed to be two different postitions for slave. The fact that it shows up in the Cosmos and also in System devices would lead me to believe that the jumpers are set correctly. The problem is it does not show up when I click on "My Computer ". If my assumption is wrong about the jumper settings, please advise as I just don't know why it does not show up in "My Computer" when it shows up in System Devices.

Roger Hoyt

 

You might want to try partitioning the drive then your OS will see it as it should. This is a common problem when making a drive the slave we the users forget that the computer needs to be able to see a partition OR what is actually referred to as the Master Boot Record (MBR) for that particular drive

 

Did you try both slave settings? I ran into that problem on one of mine. I had it on the wrong slave setting. The BIOS saw it, & the Device Manager knew it was there, but Windoze didn't. When I switched it to the other setting for slave, Windoze saw it then.

Don't know if that would work in this case, but Windoze 2000 should not be having any problem seeing a 40GB hard drive, even as a slave, since it is supposed to be able to see extremely large ones.

I'm about to install a Maxtor 80GB, and am praying I don't have any problems.

 

Thank you all for your comments. I did partition the drive and I have tried the jumper settings in several differ positions. On 3 positions I set the jumper on the Device manager saw the drive but when clicking on "My computer" the drive didn't show up.

Roger Hoyt

 

well since you have already partitioned the drive I would have to assume you have already formatted the drive as well. If not try formatting the drive in DOS before booting back into windows. You may need to disconnect the master drive, set the one currently set as slave to master and then format it. Redo your jumper settings and reconnect the main drive and see what happens

 

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At the risk of being obvious, it seems the most common cause of drives not showing in My Computer is that a tweaker, like TweakUI or X-Setup has been used and, suspecting at the time that it would cause no problems, all the unused drive letters were hidden from My Computer.

Just a thought. I hope it's that simple .

 

Yup! You got a possibility there, Abraxas. All the drive letters have to be checked in Tweakui on the My Computer tab. Or at least enough of them to include the new drive, with the CD ROM drive letters preferably last on the list of active drives. I have my CD ROM drives set as Y & Z.

Now if he's using another Tweaker, it might have something like that to set also.

No tweaker, and we're back to square one.

 

Supergeek:

Thanks for your response. I do have Tweak UI and if that is the problem how do I correct it???

Roger

 

Roger,

Go into Control Panel. Open up TweakUi. You will see a tab in there that says My Computer. Click on it.

There will be a white box with a bunch of letters in it. If all of the drive letters are not checked, checkmark all of them, all the way through Z. Then click Apply & OK.

Next, go into Device Manager & expand the + sign next to CD ROM. Highlight one of them & click on Properties. Click the Settings tab. Down where it says current Drive Letter, you will see two white boxes. Start Drive Letter, & End Drive Letter. Put the same letter in both boxes & click OK. If you have two CD ROM Drives, do the same to the other one.

You may be prompted to re-boot after doing one. Go ahead if it does prompt you, & then do the other one after it re-boots.

I set one of mine Y & the other one Z. That puts them at the very end of the drive letters, and prevents any future interference by them when partitioning off, & making more drive letters. Of course when you re-assign the CD ROM drives their new drive letters, you will have to make new shortcuts to them on your desktop, & delete the old shortcuts.

I got my 80GB in & all went well.

I hope this fixes your problem. Please post back & let us know.

 

Deloris:

Thank you again for your help. As it turns out I forgot that I had not yet installed TweakUI on this computer. I do have it on my main computer and did have it on the computer I'm having a problem with but when I rebuilt it with a new motherboard I had not yet reinstalled TweakUI.

Although, I tried several jumper settings and had done a partition, I decided to start all over again but this time I got a copy of PartitionMagic and used it to partition the drive and that solved the problem. Apparently the disk that came with the Maxtor did not do a partition and when I tried a partition with another program it didn't work. Using PartitionMagic did the trick for me.

I thank you again for your help. I plan to keep your advice on the TweakUI in my "HOW TO' book for future reference.

I also want to thank all others who posted to my message for help.

Roger Hoyt

 

I am certainly happy that you got it fixed, but hate that you had to start from scratch. That's a real bummer.

Something else about TweakUI that most people aren't aware of is......

Before you un-install TweakUI, you must go set everything that it was controlling back to the default settings. If you don't, the things you have set with it will stay in Windows Memory, & is nearly impossible to undo.

Partition Magic is the way to go. It's the cat's meow.