Drive letter missing

[Bill Davies]

gday can you help me i installed xp pro on a formatted drive C: all well there also have a dvd rom cdburner zip drive and floppy all working and lettered
but my 40 gig hard drive will not show up in my computer,but do's show in the device manager ,i put all my files on the 40 gig for saftey and canno t retrieve them ,any help please thank you

 

[Nunyobiznes]

gday can you help me i installed xp pro on a formatted drive C: all well there also have a dvd rom cdburner zip drive and floppy all working and lettered
but my 40 gig hard drive will not show up in my computer,but do's show in the device manager ,i put all my files on the 40 gig for saftey and canno t retrieve them ,any help please thank you

Is your 40gig formatted in FAT32 or NTFS?

 

[Bill Davies]

Is your 40gig formatted in FAT32 or NTFS?

its formatted fat 32

 

[Johnny™]

the drive may have been set to invisible when u installed XP could be that simple, check ur bios

 

[woody]

Your other 40 gig HD may not be accessible if the main drive is formatted NTFS.Not sure if this is the case or not.

 

[Bill Davies]

Your other 40 gig HD may not be accessible if the main drive is formatted NTFS.Not sure if this is the case or not.

gday woody the both hard drives are fat 32 thanx for you reply, is it possible that bios has hidden the drive although it shows up in the d/manager and the admin manager and tells me i have 13gig free space but will not let me change or replace the drive letter.

 

[woody]

Actually Nunyobiznes was working with you. If both drives are FAT 32 it should be accessible.Is the bios detecting the 40 gig?

 

[Bill Davies]

Actually Nunyobiznes was working with you. If both drives are FAT 32 it should be accessible.Is the bios detecting the 40 gig?

yes the bios is showing all the drives 20/40/dvdrom burner ,zip and floppy
but my computer will not show the 40gig one everythink else is working fine
thanx for the reply

 

[woody]

Only thing I can suggest is to remove the drive in device Manager,and see if Windows correctly recognizes it on startup.The Hd utility disc that comes with the HD can also be used for troubleshooting(although I never needed to resort to it).

 

[Bill Davies]

Only thing I can suggest is to remove the drive in device Manager,and see if Windows correctly recognizes it on startup.The Hd utility disc that comes with the HD can also be used for troubleshooting(although I never needed to resort to it).

ok will try that and will let you know thanx for you time kep your fingers crossed

 

[Bill Davies]

ok will try that and will let you know thanx for you time kep your fingers crossed

no luck i removed it from the d/manager and rebooted but the bios found it again ,but not xp so back to square one again ,guess i will take it out and see if a friend can put it in there computer
and try to save as much as i can and reformat it .thanx fellas for all you help
its a great forum.

 

[Johnny™]

before doing all that i have a question, were both of the hard drives originally in the computer before u decided to upgrade to XP or is one of them a new drive, i'm sure if u have them on the same ide cable u have one drive set to master and one to slave, if u have partition manager or system commander u can take a look at the settings. i still believe u have somehow set the disk to be hidden, it doesnt matter if u have XP formatted to NTFS it should still read a Fat 32 disk, but a Fat 32 will not read NTFS

 

[Nunyobiznes]

Actually Nunyobiznes was working with you. If both drives are FAT 32 it should be accessible.Is the bios detecting the 40 gig?

Got tied up doing some other shit. Back to business. If the drive was from a previous install that had an account that was password protected then your current account must also be password protected. If the previous files and folders were set to private you should be able to access them by using the same account name and password. If they were encrypted then you are S!O!L!

 

[scarecrow]

If they were encrypted then you are S!O!L!

Unless science has made progresses filesystem encryption is an option for NTFS and not FAT(32). Most likely the problem is a nonconventional FAT cluster size, and since the partition is bigger than 32 GB Windows has trouble reading it.

 

[Bill Davies]

Unless science has made progresses filesystem encryption is an option for NTFS and not FAT(32). Most likely the problem is a nonconventional FAT cluster size, and since the partition is bigger than 32 GB Windows has trouble reading it.

all the hard drives were in the same computer but ,i took the cable of the 40gig drive to format the 20 gig
drive ,i have tried every think,but i dont know were to look for the hidden drive would it help me if i reformated and leave the 40gig in place ?and see if xp reconizes it? thanx for all your help i am 60years old and trying to stay on top of all this ,and i would like to get my stuff back .

 

[Bill Davies]

all the hard drives were in the same computer but ,i took the cable of the 40gig drive to format the 20 gig
drive ,i have tried every think,but i dont know were to look for the hidden drive would it help me if i reformated and leave the 40gig in place ?and see if xp reconizes it? thanx for all your help i am 60years old and trying to stay on top of all this ,and i would like to get my stuff back .

before i reformated i was using win98me on the computer dont know if this will help so the 40gig is still under ME?

 

[Johnny™]

all the hard drives were in the same computer but ,i took the cable of the 40gig drive to format the 20 gig
drive ,i have tried every think,but i dont know were to look for the hidden drive would it help me if i reformated and leave the 40gig in place ?and see if xp reconizes it? thanx for all your help i am 60years old and trying to stay on top of all this ,and i would like to get my stuff back .

if u have access to partition magic, install it on the c drive and u can test ur hard drives for errors in cluster sizes, u can also then make changes if u have set the disks up wrong, i.e set primary drive , cluster size, etc...... windows ME uses a fat 32 and as stated earlier XP needs no special set up to read Fat 32. unless u installed another O/S system on the 40 gig a good bet is the files r fat32 btw did u mean win98se or winME 98 and ME r diffrent systems

 

[Bill Davies]

if u have access to partition magic, install it on the c drive and u can test ur hard drives for errors in cluster sizes, u can also then make changes if u have set the disks up wrong, i.e set primary drive , cluster size, etc...... windows ME uses a fat 32 and as stated earlier XP needs no special set up to read Fat 32. unless u installed another O/S system on the 40 gig a good bet is the files r fat32 btw did u mean win98se or winME 98 and ME r diffrent systems

was using windows 98me before the format i will try to get partition Magic today and try that thanx for your help

 

[Nunyobiznes]

Unless science has made progresses filesystem encryption is an option for NTFS and not FAT(32). Most likely the problem is a nonconventional FAT cluster size, and since the partition is bigger than 32 GB Windows has trouble reading it.

Where have you been smart-ass?

http://www.fileencryption.org/

Just one of several utilities for encrypting files that work under WIN9X/FAT32

 

[Nunyobiznes]

before i reformated i was using win98me on the computer dont know if this will help so the 40gig is still under ME?

Was the 40 gig the primary in the old setup? If so switch the cables and boot from it so you can access the files and burn to cd. I can't think of any other options.