Windows Cannot See HDD -- Can Anyone Help?

[soda5id]

My system specifications follow my signature. I have two internal SATA drives -- a 37 GB Raptor as my C: drive and a 160 GB Seagate. The Seagate had five logical partitions -- 2 devoted to Linux. I formatted the first partition in the process of installing Windows thinking that -- well forget about that. Then I formatted the C: drive and installed windows with no problem. My bios sees my Seagate. It's listed in device manager. I can run an ActiveX diagnostic tool on the Seagate web site with no problem, but Windows itself does not see it at all. Boot from CD Windows repair does not see it. I'm not sure a system floppy and my SATA drivers would fit on one disc. Anyway, I am completely stumped and would appreciate any suggestions.

-- Gene

MONARCH HORNET PRO 64 CUSTOM SYSTEM
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ RETAIL-BOX 10/06 Thermal Grease, Shin-Etsu G675
ENERMAX EG285SX-VB(W)SFMA 270 watt
Gigabyte GA-K8VT800M K8T800 AMD Sk754 800FSB 2DDR 400 Serial ATA Audio/LAN Micro ATX - Retail
OCZ 1GB (512MB x2 Kit) DDR PC 3200 Dual Channel Premier Series Copper Heatspreader
Gigabyte GeForce FX 5200 128 MB DDR/DVI/TV-Out/TwinView/PowerDVD Man Part # GV-N52128D
WD 360GD 36 GB SATA 10K Raptor
Seagate 160GB ST3160023AS(SATA)7200 RPM
LITE ON CDRW 52X32X52 (BLACK) OEM
MITSUMI FLOPPY,7 in 1, BLACK ,CARD,READER
MD LUCENT MODEM 56.KV.92
WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION


To other external drives -- 1 USB external and one ethernet LAN share

[Midknyte]

does the drive show up in disk management?

[soda5id]

does the drive show up in disk management?

Sorry for the omission -- no.

[Midknyte]

what does device manager say?

I'm guessing that both of the drives are on the same SATA controller.

[AllGamer]

most likely it was originally a PARTITION on the same hard drive before :t

[soda5id]

If a picture is worth a thousand words than two.... Sorry I have taken so long to respond, I have been screwing around trying to get these uploads under the limit. Finally I just grayscaled them (and resized, arrrgh) -- something else to look into. Anyway, I think these pictures should address your questions. Thanks very much.

[Midknyte]

just use MS paint and save as jpgs next time.

since you had linux on that drive, that could have something to do with it. not quite sure what the fix would be though.

[soda5id]

what does device manager say?

I'm guessing that both of the drives are on the same SATA controller.

Yes, the VIA SATA chipset and drivers includes a RAID tool that, again, sees the drive, correctly identifies it by name and serial number and notes that it has the same control of what a different channel as the C: drive -- of course, also a SATA drive.

[soda5id]

In the "Technical Support" forum under the general category "General Tech" I've posted a hard drive problem under the caption "Reinstalled Windows -- Lost HDD" -- it is about three threads down from the most current threads, has an icon for the attachments of screenshots I posted and shows seven replies. A couple people have looked at it and ask questions (to which I responded). Unfortunately, the two people that looked at it had no suggestions whatsoever as to what might be the problem. At this point, I do not believe that I'm going to get any more responses because with seven replies I think people are skipping over its assuming that the issue is resolved. Could some hard drive expert who "hangs around" this sub forum please take a look and see if you might have a suggestion. I will be very grateful.

-- Gene

[BipolarBill]

What on Earth is that H drive? It's 372.60GB! My Book?

[soda5id]

What on Earth is that H drive? It's 372.60GB! My Book?

It is a 400 GB external Seagate USB 2.0 16 MB cache FAT 32 Hard Drive with a nice feature that it powers up and down with my PC. "My Book" is the Seagate brand name for this particular device.

PS I am not all that new here -- I had to be registered. I recognize your screen name -- are medications helping? :-)

[BipolarBill]

Well, either the drive is defective or it's not jumpered properly.

Check the cable, all pins and the jumper carefully.

[soda5id]

Well, either the drive is defective or it's not jumpered properly.

Check the cable, all pins and the jumper carefully.

I don't believe it has any jumpers -- it is a SATA drive. The Seagate web site has an ActiveX application that runs in Microsoft IE -- it is a diagnostic tool. When I run it, it lists all three drives connected to my computer. I put a checkbox in the 160 GB Seagate at issue in this post and I could hear the drive running as the diagnostic tool operated upon it. It then reported a number of categories with everything okay. I can run this again and post a screenshot if you believe that would help. To me, that is what is so weird, that basically my browser, or at least an ActiveX applet running there in, can see the drive, device manager can see the drive, but is not my computer or disk manager and, of course, I cannot read or write to it. Alas, I will not be able to check the physical connections until this weekend when I have some help. However, I am kind of doubtful that is the problem. It had five partitions on it before I reinstalled Windows and I foolishly only formatted the first partition when I could see it instead of everyone on the drive. Now I think that, physically, it sees an unallocated partition, then 2 Linux EC3 (OS and swap) and then the final to partitions actually made to install Linux upon. That didn't work out. But now the first partition is a Linux partition. I don't know if any of this makes sense. My thinking was that if I formatted the first partition I would format the MBR for that physical drive and then be able to format the entire drive from my newly installed Windows. That did not work, to say the least.

[Sterling_Aug]

Sounds like time for trusty FDISK and format or ZAP as Rocket would recommend..

Make sure you have the SATA drivers available when you go to reinstall Windows.

[Midknyte]

are you trying to save the data or not? if not, then a zero fill should do the trick also. then use disk management to partition/format

[soda5id]

No, I am not trying to save data. Yes, I do have the SATA drivers on floppy -- but they fill up the whole floppy. There's not enough room to make a system disk on a floppy. As I said earlier if I boot from a Windows CD the Seagate doesn't show in MAP. Are you guys suggesting DOS? I know how to use FDISK, sort of. But I do not know how to make a bootable floppy with the SATA drivers. How can I do that?

[Midknyte]

if you're not trying to save data, you should have said so in the first place.

you can use seatools, killdisk or DBAN to zerofill the drive. download UBCD:

Tech Tools (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=173743)

[soda5id]

are you trying to save the data or not? if not, then a zero fill should do the trick also. then use disk management to partition/format

It does *not* show in disk management -- plz see attachments.

[BipolarBill]

Then the drive is bad. RMA it.

[soda5id]

Then the drive is bad. RMA it.

I installed Vista. It does see the hard drive in disk management. The problem is that the disk is not "initialized. " Windows can't initialize, it does it returns an error message. I now believe it is a cable problem--I have a big 750 gram heat sink and fan that presses on the SATA cables. If that doesn't work I will RMA it.