Adding a slave hard drive that has previously been formatted/partitioned

[DUD]

My 10 gig HD is full of MP3's and such. Dad gave me a Maxtor 20 GB HD which I have installed as a slave. However, the computer shows it as two drives (D and F) while the previous drive (also partitioned) shows as C and E. The new drive has some files in D, but nothing in F. I would like to delete what is on D and reformat, if that is the right term, the new HD as a single drive with nothing on it. I entered the BIOS, selected "auto" for HD detection, and selected the CMOS setup utility which is giving me 3 options for the Primary Slave:

2 20490 2491 255 0 39703 63 LBA
1 20492 39704 16 65535 39703 63 Normal
3 20492 4963 128 65535 39703 63 Large

Which do I select? Can someone help me out so I get the set-up I want? Complete instructions would be appreciated.

[DUD]

I have done the job using the MaxBlast software from Maxtor's website. Thanks anyway.

[RayH]

Select LBA.

The drives, by default, are:

c: primary physical drive, first partition

d: second physical drive, first partion

Then in alphabetical order: the extended partitions of the first physical drive.

Then in alphabetical order: the extended partitions on the second physical drive

[Psycho Logical]

Ain't always necessarily so. Depends on how you FDISK the second HD.

Order in Which MS-DOS and Windows Assign Drive Letters
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q51/9/78.ASP

How to Prevent Drive Letters from Changing After You Add a Hard Disk or a CD-ROM
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q282/5/30.ASP

[Explorer]

If the computer shows D and F on the drive your Dad gave you it has been partitioned with fdisk into two drives. To change it back to one large drive you will need to use fdisk at a DOS prompt and delete the two partitions.

BE VERY VERY CAREFUL WITH FDISK!! Once you delete a partition, everything stored in it is gone and not recoverable without special software and sometimes not even then.

Regarding the HD detection, the 2 option is usually the best. It enables LBA (logical block addressing), normally the best choice which is why it is presented first in the list of options.

To use fdisk you need to restart the computer in MS-DOS mode then change to the c:\windows\command directory.

Type fdisk and press enter.
You will then get a long screen asking if you wish to enable large disk support,with Y pre-selected, press Enter.

The next screen, just under FDISK Options, will show "Current fixed disk drive: 1", that will be your 10 gig master drive (C and E). You will have an option below to select which drive you want to work on (#5 if I recall correctly). If I'm right, press 5 and press Enter. Otherwise press the number that corresponds to selecting drives. That will bring up a window showing your two drives, their sizes, etc. Press the number of the drive (which should be 2) that represents the 20 Gig your Dad gave you. Press Enter.

The next screen presents options to create Dos partitions, set active partitions, etc. Select Display Partition Information by pressing the corresponding number and pressing Enter.

The next screen shows two rows of info regarding the drive. Under partition, it should show D with F below it. What we are really interested in here is the line that says "Total disk space is". This should be close to the 20 Gig size of the drive your Dad gave you (about 20000 Mbytes) but probably shows slightly less than that. If it does then you can be sure you are working on the right drive and aren't about you wipe out Windows, your MP3's, and software on the C: drive.

Press Esc.

At the next screen will be the option to Delete partition or logical DOS drive. Press the corresponding number and press Enter.

The next screen lets you actually delete partitions. This part gets a little fuzzy as I haven't done it in a while. Select "Delete Logical DOS Drives in the Extended DOS Partition" by again pressing the corresponding number and pressing Enter. The logical DOS drive we are trying to get rid of is F so pick the correct number in the next screen and press Enter and Y when it asks are you sure.

When done, press Esc to return to the previous screen, select "Delete Extended DOS Partition", pick what should be the only one on the next screen and press Enter. Press Esc when done.

You should now be back at the screen that allows you to delete the Primary DOS Partition, select it's number and press Enter, select the only partiton listed and press Enter in the next screen. Press Esc.

At this point there shouldn't be any partitions on the drive. Confirm it by selecting Display Partition Information. If all is OK, press Esc to return.

You now have to create a Primary DOS Partition and make it active. It's straight forward from here. Press the appropriate number (1) and press Enter. It'll do some work, ask if you want to use the full disk as a partition and if you want to make it active. Say yes to all.

When done it will advise you must shut down to enable everything. Press Esc after answering any simple questions. Shut down and re-boot the computer.

You should now have 3 hard drives. C: will be the primary partition on your master (10gig) drive, D: will be the 20 Gig drive, E: will be the secondary partition on your 10 Gig drive. D: will not be accessible as it hasn't yet been formatted which has to be done before it can store files. So, back to DOS by re-starting in DOS mode.

Change to the c:\windows\command directory, type dir D: press Enter. You should get an Invalid response as the drive is formatted yet but now we're sure we're going to format the correct drive.

Get back to c:\windows\command and type format d: press Enter. You'll get a warning, respond with y and Press Enter. The drive will be formatted (may take a while depending on the speed of your computer). When done it will ask for a Volume Label and the line will be blank. Leave it bland and just press Enter.

When it's all done, re-boot the computer and you sould now have a usuable 20 Gig hard drive :-)