Win2k wont read my 2nd harddisk !!

[Lith1um]

hi everyone !
i have pIII 256 mb ram pc with 2 harddisks , 20 gb and 80 gb, and each one has 2 partitions .
today i formatted a partition from the first one ( 20 gb ) and installed win2k ....
now when i get into windows , i cant access the old 80 gb HD coz it says " this drive is not formatted " and asks me if i wanna format it , ofcourse i dont want to since it contains all my data !
the wierd thing is that when i remove win2k and install win98 , win98 reads the 2nd drive and its 2 partitions normally !!
both harddisks are formatted as fat32 !


cheers.

[BipolarBill]

Have you looked at it in Disk Management? Start > Run > DISKMGMT.MSC

[Lith1um]

yeah i did !
it reads the harddisk as a non partitioned empty unformatted disk !!!!
so now i had to install back win98 , and again it works fine !!
but i need to install win2k !! so what's the solution !?

[BipolarBill]

You must be using a disk overlay like GoBack, EZBIOS or Disk Manager on the drive. You have to remove the overlay before you transfer.

[mrrobotto]

Do you get a boot menu when you boot up?

[Lith1um]

yeah i get a menu when i boot up ( you mean when i press f8 ?)
anyways , everything is fine with windows and the pc , and the bios detects the harddisk and all , but win2k sees it as an unformatted harddisk !!!!
so a guy suggested i should use partition magic to fix the volume of the harddisk or something , i gope that works and doesnt delete my data on that harddisk !!

[mrrobotto]

No not when you press F8. do you get a boot menu to select which os you want to boot. If you are installing Win2000 with Win98 it seems that you would want to dual boot.

What other purpose would there be for installing the other OS?

[Lith1um]

no i dont get dual boot , it didnt work out properly for some reason ! so i had to format c: and install win98 again !!

[mrrobotto]

Did you try it with win98 loaded then put in your Win2000 cd and choose new install then pick which partition you wanted to install Win2000 on.

That's the perfered method that I know of and that's how I did it and it worked fine.

[Cee-W]

mrrobotto is correct. The proper way to setup dual boot OS is that Win98 has to be 1st on the C partition. Then you can put win2k in CD, while in win98 and do a new install to another partition. You will then get the dual boot option.

[Picard]

Originally posted by Cee-W
mrrobotto is correct. The proper way to setup dual boot OS is that Win98 has to be 1st on the C partition. Then you can put win2k in CD, while in win98 and do a new install to another partition. You will then get the dual boot option.

mrrobotto may be correct, but it is irrelevent to the issue. Windows 2000 is unable to see the partitions on the second drive. As BP said, Lith1um probably has a drive overlay that needs to be removed.

BUT BP did not mention that the data from the drives will need to be backup up (copied to another drive or burned to cd) before removing the overlay, since that will effectively wipe the drive.