HDD no well recognised

[rodrenvella]

HI,

I have 2HDD having 2partitions each. The 1 i had my windows on was set to slave and the other had no windows and was set to master and everything used to work well.

I backed my files on the HDD which had only files (no windows) to format the other HDD and install a fresh windows xp.

Before formatting i unpluged the backups HDD just incase i format that by mistake instead the other 1 and formatted the windows 1 and installed windows xp.

I repluged my backups HDD and my pc before it comes to the windows screen resets, or starts and only 1partition is showed which is said to be empty which it ain't.

any help please?

[DigitalJunkie]

Does your BIOS show just 1 hdd or both?

[RACKnRAIL]

Why isn't your windows hd your master? I would just switch them since the bios prolly boots to hdd-0.

[rodrenvella]

I've tried setting them as they should be windows=master and backups=slave and the pc recognized the backups HDD when i plugged another hdd with windows. But still when the system loads up there is only 1partition of 127GB were the HDD is a 250GB. When tried this with the windows HDD i had the pc doesn't recognize backups.

When i check from the bios their actual size it shows correctly that my backups HDD is 250GB.

its really weird how it used to work when the windows hdd was set to slave and other with no windows was slave. It was set like this by the shop technicions of were i both my new HDD the 250 GB 1.

really weird problem :S... any suggestions?

[RACKnRAIL]

what kind of HD is it? you could try going to the site and downloading their diag tool. set your bios to boot to the diag CD and boot to the diag tool, which has various diagnostic tools. there is also partition magic, which could possibly detect what's going on. other boot CD's like Active@ Partition Recovery v 1.0 or http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd could be helpful.

[Phantom_Magus]

Have you installed the updates for xp? With the release of sp1 it allows windows to recognize hdd's over 250gb+

[Boomer The Dog]

That sounds like it, what Phantom_Magnus said, there's a limit to the size that older Windows can see, and SP1 and higher solves that problem. If you can't get the service packs for some reason, go to the site for the company that makes your drive and they might have a program that will let Windows see the full drive.

[RACKnRAIL]

I think we need to know what service pack, if any, he has installed before jumping to conclusions. What does the bios see for hard drives? Are the jumpers and IDE cables set properly?