Dual Hard Drives

[pennydog]

We have 2 hdd's on our computer. One is a Sata and the other is IDE, both Western Digital. They are both plugged in but it only recognizes the IDE hdd. We have to unplug the IDE to get it to recognize the Sata.

How do we get the computer to recognize both hdd's? Thanks for any info.

[Midknyte]

Check your bios settings. Are both drives detected there?

What motherboard are you using?

[Steve R Jones]

Is there an operating system on both? If so, which ones?

[SuperSparks]

Have a look in Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management (or Start>Run>diskmgmt.msc), and tell us what it reports the status of the drive as in there please. Posting a screenshot would be ideal.

Screenshot guide

[pennydog]

Only one hdd shows in the Bios and it is the IDE hdd. Mother board is Asus (I believe) and the OS on both is Win XP Pro.

I will run the report when I get home this afternoon. Thanks.

[Steve R Jones]

BE CAREFULL....Keep in mind you can ONLY have One C drive...If you get both drives hooked up...One might get remarked as D drive to the other and destroy the ability to boot off of it.

[pennydog]

Here is the screenshot as requested (thanks for the screenshot saving tips), if there is any additional info needed, please let me know.

Thanks!!

[SuperSparks]

I think you have a dead hard drive You could try installing it in another PC and running the drive makers' diagnostic utility on it to make sure.

[pennydog]

SS, both hard drives are fully operational in this PC, I'll explain further and hopefully you'll see our dilema.

Here is the drive listing for our PC as shown in My Computer,
A = floppy dive
C = Hard drive
E = DVD
F = CD
G = Removable drive (an HP Photosmart printer connected via USB)

With both hard drives, a WD IDE and a WD SATA, connected at the same time to the motherboard (Asus K8V S.E. Deluxe), when the system boots up, the IDE hard drive is recognized as the 'C' drive and we can use it with all normal functions. BUT the other hard drive, the SATA is not recognized in any way.

After shutting the system down, I can simply unplug the power cord and ribbon cable on the back of the IDE drive , reboot the system, the SATA hdd is recognized as the 'C' drive and works properly except for one major concern, it will not make a connection to the internet. That's the reason we recently reconnected the IDE hdd, so we could get out on the interent to attempt to find the reason for the SATA hdd losing the ability to connect to the internet (this problem was addressed on another thread, but not resolved).

If possible, we would like to be able to use both hard drives without disconnecting/reconnecting to make the switch.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.

[Train]

Change G: to H:
Now hook up the sata and see if it is picked up as G:. Should be.

[Steve R Jones]

BE CAREFULL....Keep in mind you can ONLY have One C drive...If you get both drives hooked up...One might get remarked as D drive to the other and destroy the ability to boot off of it.

I'm rather certain that you don't want to be successful with your mission.

You got in this position by installing XP with only one drive hooked up at one time. You could get it to work if you started over with one of the XP installlations.

[pennydog]

Train, is there a specific procedure for changing the drive designation?

Steve, I don't understand your reply. Please explain why you think I don't want (or need) to have two hard drives available on our PC. I'm not trying to create two 'C' drives.

Thanks

[Steve R Jones]

Both drives have XP installed and both drives have "C" drives...

Had you installed XP on the second drive when both drives were hooked up - the second install would have taken a different drive letter. AND, the second XP install would have created a Dual Boot menu.

So, if you get one drive to see the other drive you run the risk of XP renaming the drive letter of the other install and effectily killing it since it has tons of registry entries that won't change.

[Train]

How to change drive letter assignments in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

[pennydog]

Steve, thanks for the explanation, I understand the reasoning now.

Train, thanks for the link.

Our plan was to transfer as much as possible (photos, documents, files, programs, etc) from the original SATA hd to the IDE hd, then reformat the SATA and give it a fresh installation. We wanted the ability to use both hard drives, one for daily use, the other as a backup. Can we accomplish this after the SATA is reformatted?