Windows not seeing hard drive

Technojunkie · 21 Mar 2007 at 19:12

Hi

I've got two Samsung spinpoint 2504C 250G drives that I used as photo storage on my old machine. I have removed them and put them in a new machine I'm building, however Windows refuses to recognise one of the drives.

I know its not a hardware fault because:

1. The drive works perfectly well in the old machine.
2. The SATA connection/power cabling works OK with other drives.
3. The BIOS recognises the drive correctly.

I've tried it with both drives in, on it own, in SATA modes I and II, but I still get diddly squat!

Both drives are identical in every way (Except for the data on them), but one works and one doesn't.

Any ideas?

AB9 Pro
E6600
2G Geil
XP Pro

mr.bond · 21 Mar 2007 at 20:06

computer management/disk manager, see if the disk is there.

thepharcyde · 21 Mar 2007 at 20:35

Do you have Windows Vista Home edition, if so take a look at this

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17699096

Sherbs · 21 Mar 2007 at 20:42

Have you upgraded to SP2? Also, if there stuff on them you want to keep don't format them!

Technojunkie · 21 Mar 2007 at 22:34

Thanks for the replies.

I'm using XP Pro SP2 all up to date. Both the old and new machine are.

Latest Bios for the Mobo(and have tried previous version).

Nope... the disk doesn't show in Disk manager....or Partition magic.

Any other ideas?

Fr0dders · 21 Mar 2007 at 23:06

does it even show in "disks" in device manager ?

bledd · 21 Mar 2007 at 23:23

how many sata ports do you have?

possible that you have 2x controllers and windows only has the driver for one of them

check device manager (also check what mrlol said first)

Technojunkie · 21 Mar 2007 at 23:59

The disk doesn't show any place in windows, or as I said Partition magic

SATA ports 1-6 are all of the same Intel controller. I can plug the good drive into say port 2 and it works no probs. Disconnect it and plug the other drive in and ....nothing.You can do the same with any port.
But plug it back in to the old machine and it works perfectly???

Technojunkie · 22 Mar 2007 at 23:30

For anyone interested, found the problem with the invisible drive.

I connected it to a third PC to see if windows on it would see it, and it did.
But, in disk manager it was comming up with "Foreign Disk". Although, according to my old machine, it was set up exactly the same as it's twin, a basic volume with NTFS formatting.

At least now it allowed me select the "Convert to basic volume" option, and hey presto!

I stuck it back in my new machine and XP recognised it no problem.

Cheers