2nd hard drive won't show up

I have this old 1.7Gb ATA?? Seagate drive (model #: ST31720A) and I want to be able move my media files to it. My motherboard has 2 IDE "plugs" or they might be called adapters. The hard drive and CD ROM are on the "plug" labeled IDE1. Nothing was ever hooked up the the IDE2 "plug."

So, I connected the Seagate HD to the IDE2 "plug" and connected the power plug to the HD. I thought it would just show up in Windows Explorer (XP) but after searching on the Web, I found out I'll have to configure it in Disk Manager. So, When I went into Disk Manager nothing showed up. Maybe I didn't connect it properly I thought. So I went into the BIOS to see if it was able to detect it, and BIOS detects it fine on the correct "channel," the IDE2.

So, my question is, is there anything I can do to get Windows to read this drive? The Seagate website doesn't even recognize this model!!!! I guess it's too old (came from a computer with EDO Ram and a Pentium 1 chip).

Something that might be messing it up is Windows 95 is installed on it. But the OS isn't configured for any system, all the drivers got earased. I don't know if that would make Windows XP not recognize it.

 

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I don't think the win95 install would be a problem.

I'm not sure what comes with XP but you might need to reformat it through an Emergency disk, and then repartition it.
(Afterall it's bootblock would have been rigged for being the primary driveand nearly forgot, the old drive would be FAT32 not NTFS so clusters might play a part.)

(A win98 diskette method would be FDISK for re-partitioning and then format)

Hope that helps.

 

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To do that, would I have to change the BIOS setting so that the old HD on IDE2 boots up before the HD with XP?

 

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Well the BIOS should load the drive's Controllers (The ones that exist within it's board chips for IRQ/memory address/IO etc.)

You just have to break into your boot sequence before XP starts to load. You can use an emergency diskette to do the fixes.

You should just leave the BIOS for now, and give it a go with the emergency disk. If it still doesn't work alter the BIOS if you think it will aid, I just think it was down to how the drive was previously orientated since my guess is that it too was a C: drive in it's former incarnation.

So it just needs a Format at a command prompt. (which should alter it's file typing too

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Most computers need to know which is the slave and which is the master hard drive. This is usually done by jumpers on the hd.

When that is done, what you do next depends on your os. If you run XP, you must mount the drive. Run a search for help in mounting a drive. It should give you a link straight to the location to do this. Otherwise you could spend some time hunting for the location to do this at.

Good luck.

 

I found the problem. I ran Fdisk like you guys suggested (had to take the Seagate drive and hook it back to the old computer) and found that the file system was FAT16. Explorer couldn't find it cause WinXP can't deal with FAT16.

Posted in case someone else has a similar problem.

 

Thanks for posting the overall outcome.

As your right it might help someone in the future. (I was close... just 16 out

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