how do i get windows me to read a secondary hard disk....bios reads thats its installed and working?

Question

im using windows ME not windows 98 or windows xp

Answer 1

Hi there:
Since you already know that the BIOS detects the harddrive,
and it "is" there, then ME does not " SEE " it since it is not
FORMATTED in one of the many formats that ME will
recognize... The fact that the BOOT screen BIOS lists
the drive is very important, since it means that the drive
cables and jumpers and power are all connected correctly.
It also means that you are advanced enough to read the
BIOS, understand what it means, and are advanced enough
that people helping you can skip over the process of
mechanically connecting the harddrive to the motherboard.
This simplifies the task of getting ME to " see " the drive itself...


Go to BOOTDISK.com and get the WIN98SE boot disk.
You will get a program that MAKES a floppy for you in
your own computer, after you run it. Make the floppy disk.

Go into your BIOS and set first BOOT device to FLOPPY.
In the win98 boot floppy startup screen ( a DOS PROMPT )
you can type


A:\> FDISK (enter)
option 5 is to change haddrives, and I assume you will
want to change to the SECONDARY or SLAVE drive,
which, iff there were only 2 drives, would be drive 2
[ FDISK is the DOS command to Format the Master Boot
Record ( MBR ) of the harddrive - the VERY first place
that the computer looks at when it checks a harddrive )

option 4 is to LOOK AT the drive formatting. Look at the
partition information, and you may see NON DOS PARTITION,
or NOT PARTITIONED etc, which is what I suspect is the problem.

IFF so, then either DELETE NON DOS or, Create a new
partition, with 1, and continue until there is a FAT32, DOS
partition there....

You then ESC ESC to leave FDISK, and go back to
the A: prompt.

You then HAVE TO reboot on to the A: disk again, so that
the new partition you just created ( FAT32 ) is registered
with the BIOS....

THEN, at the A:\> prompt type

C:
DIR ( DIR is the DOS command for show DIRectory )
and see that C: is your old ME drive,

Then type
D:
DIR

to see what drive D: is

if it sayes RAMDRIVE, this is the temporary win98 boot
drive in memory,
iff it sayes D: is invalid and not reading, then you
have found your newly partitioned drive,

iff D: is ramdrive, type

E: ( enter )
DIR ( enter )
and then you should get an invalid media error.
(( if you don't get valid media, then go to F: etc. until you get
invalid media ))

Then, this is your new harddrive, partitioned, but not
formatted..

THEN,

go back to A: ( the floppy ) by typing

A: (enter)

and type

FORMAT E: ( or F: or whatever is the invalid media )

proceed to format the drive in FAT ( File Allocation Table ) 32,
which ME will see.

[ FORMAT is the DOS command to FORMAT the actual
harddrive's index of "pages" of lists of what is on the
harddrive, and mark each page on the platter, ready to
accept written computer infomation like programs and
data. At this point, the FORMAT just marks all the pages
on the drive as being there, but are " empty".]

at the end of the format, you will be asked to give a name,
MAX 11 characters - just use alphabetic characters, ...
if you try to use symbols and whatnot, you will generate errors,
so Keep It Simple ( KISS theory ).

and then, remove floppy and set BIOS to boot from your
ME drive....

NOW..

ME will "see" the harddrive... and you can work with it...

hope this helps.

If you try this, and still have a problem, then post a comment
and I will check again to get to the next step.

ROBIN

Answer 2

not enough information

windows what? 98? 2000? XP?

Is the drive formatted? Has it been partitioned?

in XP Pro (providing you have set it up to show the admin functions) you can try
Start->Computer Management->Disk Management

From there you can format and do other things.

You should at least be able to see of XP is recognizing the disk at all.

One thing you might check is the jumpers on the disk to make sure that they are set properly.

Master / Slave etc and make sure they are conntect correctly on the cable and that both have power etc.

I have about 13 hard drives that I use in my computer at different times (backups / gaming / development / movie storage) etc and most are set to cable select and many are bootable.

All I have to do to access things I need within a certaion configuration is to reboot and hit F8 and select the drive I want to boot from (cable select must be the jumper setting for the drives to switch back and forth correctly)

hope that helps

Answer 3

how about a little more info?? like what OS you are using...

i would assume that you are using Windows 98SE... in this case.. you'll have to use a Windows 98SE bootdisk and create a logical drive so that you can actually see the 2nd hard drive within windows 98SE....

http://www.bootdisk.com --> where you can download the bootdisk images for creating the bootdisk.

Answer 4

plug it to your second ide on its own then reboot it should find it
also try this make a boot disk
reboot to floppy
option 4
the drive will be "D" or "E" format it
somethink like this A:/format /d:
then enter

Answer 5

Your trying to hook up a secondary internal hard drive?

Read it, set it up to be a slave... and it'll be in your My Computer... 0.o

Answer 6

Not that much information,but ok...find it in google.