Re-installed WinXP can't see my 2nd Hard Drive

Currently I've got three hard drives in my PC. A 10GB, 40GBm, and 300GB (which I purchased this Christmas).

I had Win XP installed on the 40GB with the 10GB blank (straight formatted to NTFS from when I got my first PC). I installed the 300GB and partitioned it (10:100:70:100GB - all primary partitions). I left the 10 to re-install Win XP so I could get a clean install.

I tried to install windows on the 300, but it was read as a 130 undefined drive?? I didn't really know why this was so I installed windows on my spare 10GB drive. Now when I boot into this new version I can only see my 40GB drive.

It's also worth mentioning that when I originally replaced my 10 with the 40 it had to take drive letter F. When I boot into my orginal config the drives are:

40GB Drive - F
300GB Drive - 10GB(C), 100GB(G), 70GB(H), 100GB(I)
10GB Drive - Z

and when I boot into my new config I get:

40GB Drive - C
130GB Drive (??) - D (unreadable)
10GB Drive - E

They're all formatted with NTFS; I just can't seem to suss it out. Please help!!

 

Anyone got any ideas????

 

Try going into disk management and seeing what it shows about the 300gb hard drive. I like using the mmc window to do this.

Go to start>run>type mmc>hit enter. When the window opens click file>add/remove snap-in>click add> scroll down and click on disk management. Click add>the dot for "this computer" should be selected and and click finish. Click close>click ok.

Now you can click on disk management in the left pane and it will show you how your various drives are configured. You may try using this the formatt the 300GB hard drive and make sure drive letters are assigned.

 

Thanks for replying mate. That's the thing though; I look at Disk Management in Admin Tools on each install and they appear as in my previous post.

Do I need to edit the boot.ini in a particular way or is there a way I can make the new install of windows see the 300GB?

At the minute it's like they're completely different systems and only the 40GB and 10GB can see each other in both cases. I don't mind having to mess about backing up data and sorting drives, but I've got a lot of stuff on the 300GB and I'd rather just leave it on there.

 

can you see your h/d's in device manager? are they working? did you have all of your drives connected when you reinstalled? after i did my reinstall of xp, i wasn't able to read my 2nd h/d (i had it plugged in as well). i had come to the conclusion that my disk had gotten corrupted (even before i contacted western digital). i am currently using some recovery software to get some of my data off. i have a screen shot below, and some on my other thread.- g/l, sos

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=57595 <-- my thread about 1 week ago

http://www.pcinspector.de/smart_media_recovery/uk/welcome.htm <-- this is what i'm using, but i'm using an older version of what they have now. (it's totally changed since i started using it a week or two ago).

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=58213&highlight=data+recovery <-- i tried this one, but i couldn't figure it out.

this was my response from western digital:

For your future reference, whenever you do an Operating System install, you should always remove any other drives in your system except for the drive you intend on installing the Operating System. When you leave other drives connected to the system even though you are not installing the Operating System, Windows will corrupt the partition table. You will now need to run a Data Recovery program to get your data off the drive.

After you have recovered your data I would suggest that you Write Zeros to the drive with our diagnostics software to do a low level format wiping all the data off the drive and clearing the boot sector of the drive. Then repartition and format the drive in Disk Management.

 

When I boot into my original install of Windows I can see all the drives; the 300GB partitioned and working correctly.

When I boot into my other installation of Windows (on the spare 10GB drive) it sees:

C: - 40GB Drive (System)
D: - Unreadable
E: - 10GB Drive (Boot)

The drive's partitions are intact for the original so they must be ok. As it stands I wouldn't need any kind of data recovery as I can still access it. Cheers for the suggestion though... It's not a install over my original OS but a seperate one on another drive so I can boot into either.

Just to be sure, wouldn't I need to install the OS with all hard drives attached so that the correct information is available to the Boot Loader anyway??

 

Still stuck with this guys. Does anyone know what to do??