Hard drive not recognized

[jsoules1]

Hi,
I"m running a home-built computer with a mach-speed MB, a Celeron 2.0G processor,256Mb DDR RAM, a DVD-Rom, CD/RW,and I'm running Win 98 SE. I was doing a little experimenting with a couple of old hard drives I aquired (they're both about 3Gig). I put them both in my machine and loaded my OS (Windows 98 SE).I formatted and partitioned both drives. One I jumpered as "primary-master" and the other I jumpered as "primary-slave". Everything worked fine. I drag/dropped some files onto the slave drive .

I switched my "primary-master" to a larger hard drive and reloaded my OS (formatting before loading my Windows 98SE OS). this time when I went to Windows explorer to move the files to the larger drive, the smaller one was not shown. I re-booted the machine and in the start-up, I see the drive listed , but I can't find it in My Computer or Windows Explorer. I've double, triple and quadruple checked my jumper positions and cable positions and everything is as it should be. I hear and feel the drive respond when I boot the machine and the indicator light comes on while the machine is booting.

The files aren't "that" important that I can't reformat the drive or even chuck it; however, I did put some music files on it that I'd like to "try" to get back. I'm more interested in the learning end of this dilemma. I could probably take it to a shop and see if they can get my files back, but I don't think the files are important enough to spend that much money for,you know?Can anyone help?

Thanks,
Jim

 

[virtualgeorg]

I would try connecting just the drive your having a problem with by itself as master or slave just to see if it is recognized. Then at least you know the drive didn't die and its just a configuration problem.

Also I think I have seen on some drives there is jumper setting for "master" and another setting for "master w/slave present" You may want to check that on the new drive you installed.

 

[jsoules1]

Hi George,

Thank you for the reply:

I've tried to connect the "missing" drive by itself, in both configurations ( as master and as slave). and the system recognizes it but since it does not have the OS installed, it won't boot. This I'm sure is normal. I will look at the other drive to see if there is a setting for the jumper to "include" the slave drive and get back to you.

I do hope that others will add their input as well.

Again, thank you for replying,

Jim