[RESOLVED] local drives not displaying correctly

hi guys. i think that this may be a problem with my windows not my hard drive. i have purchased a 2nd hard drive (40gb seagate barracuda) to store my backup images onto. i have this installed as a slave to my 160gb western digital which my xp home sp2 is installed. when using seatools to install the drive it works fine and displays the correct size. after reboot however, the drive disapears from my local discs section in 'my computer'. it is still displayed in device manager but with 2 partitions (which i have not made). also the size is now displayed as 8.5gb. any ideas??

Start->Run and type DISKMGMT.MSC

Right click on the partitions (new drive) and delete them. Right click again and re-create the partitions and select Primary Partition. Set the size for the whole drive or if you want more than one partition tell it how much to use.

Actually I disagree with Steve for once. I would choose an Extended partition rather than Primary, it keeps the drive letters in a logical order, and there really isn't any need for more than one primary partition.

not happenin. although in the properties of my 2nd hard drive it tells me that i have 2 partitions, under DISKMGMT.MSC there is only 1 partition which i cant delete. this 1 partition is healthy (apparantly) and only 8.5gb. where is the rest? and why will it not show on 'my computer'?

What happens when you try to delete the one partition? Is the rest of the drive marked as unallocated?

i apologise. by 1 partition i mean that it is one drive ie. all of the drives space is allocated in 1 partitions. so i cant delete any partitions. as there is only one. it is a non partitioned drive if you like. according to windows anyway.

If you right click on the drive in Diskmgmt, what options do you see?

open, explore, change drive letter and paths, proprties and help.

Well there's something definitely not right there then. If it were me I'd low-level format that sucker, that should fix it. The drive maker will have a utility which will allow you to do it (some of them call it writing zeros).

thank you. low level format worked. i have now got a working 2nd hard drive.

Great news, thanks for posting back and letting us know :)