Pata HD issue

Hi guys got a sticky one here.. A friends 9 year old has got a really bad Virus and cant rid so we have decided to format and do a clean install. Have put in my com and Bios recognising it but not windows. I have 2 Sata striped and 1 Eide and trying to add another Sata. Looked in Disk Management but no where to be seen.. Advice please Geeks.

 

Have you tried to set it to IDE 0, IN BIOS ?
The raid setup is possibly confusing it.

 

Thanx for swift reply but I am not sure I am with you I have gone into Inter Periphrials and Changed the ''Primary Master'' ( which is is showing as ) and changed setting from Auto to MODE 0 but still not recognised. Have I followed you correctly ????

 

Is Windows on the IDE hard drive, and the sata drives striped , making one large disk?
If so, I believe the drive you are trying to format has to be a similar size to those that you have.
I am not that conversant with raid, but the little I learned tells me that with a striped (raid 0) your data is spread over the 3 disks you have.
I would be concerned that adding another to it, might cause data loss .

 

Sometimes, the manufacturers floppy sata driver needs to be installed, to see a sata drive in Windows.(although XP can most times do it without it ) I have had a problems a few times that Windows did not see the disk, even when pressing f6,when trying to install, as a new op.
You could try cable select to start from that drive, and instead of formatting through your system management, format it with XP

 

Thanks Baklogic My 2 SATA are dtriped to 0 which has the OS on.. the EIDE is a storage and the one I am trying to get windows to recognise is a 80 Gig SATA which should show as an extra data storage. I assume XP drivers is recognising it as if required I could boot from it but that is not the object of the excersise. I would have thought in Disk management it should be showing there and use the Foreign Import facility but thats not possible.. confused I'll have to think of another way if brain can function lol

 

2 striped, 1 ide-storage- o.k
Sorry I could not be more help, I read up a lot on raid, in the past, and decided it was not for me, as I would rather set up extra disks , and partitions to store my neccessities.The extra speed in striping was of little use to me, and with my luck, I would have a disk go, when I was complacent, and lose it all.
I see you just cannot get the grey cells on the right way to go, but if no one else chips in, I would consider the floppy raid driver.
I will look in though to see if any other help is forthcoming.:wave

 

Brain cells are operating ... I have now put the SATA HD back to the kids com and managed to merge the 2 partitions ( which was a miracle as they both had the XP on) and have now managed a slow full format and will complete a fresh install. Damn virus I thought we had rid but obviously not as it was the dreaded reboot variety on startup. Someone somewhere had gone into BIOS and put a password in there, this sounds like a shady person to me as parents would obviously have to call back repairer.. Still the format will now fix that issue as well. Thanks for your input and help baklogic.. One happy 9 year old when he returns from school tomorrow and a fellow Geek I may add.

 

I am pleased you got those grey cells working - that bios password is a real pain, the only way I ever got round it was to cheat and use Disk Wizard to save the mbr, delete the partition, and then replace mbr, and partition. (Lazy, I know, but easyvway out.)- I still use it if one of my considerable family has real Hard drive problems, it saves me a lot of time.
Glad it leaves a happy 9 year old geek.