Multiple SATA HD with XP

Hi,

I've two sata hard disks in my system. Both are detected in BIOS. I've installed windows XP with SP2.

When I logs in and goes to disk management, it shows only 1 disk with name disk 0 where XP is installed.

Then I went to device manager, it shows both SATA hard disk in the disk drivers section and in IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section.

Is it required to format the second HD. I've some data in the hard disk. is it possible to format the hard disk with out loosing the data? if possible how?

Can anybody help me out to solve this?

Background:
------------
I had an Windows xp installation in my old hard disk. I deleted one logical partition from the hard disk. There after windows was not loading. After booting and showing 'loading windows' screen system was restarting.

I tried to reinstall windows. After showing the boot screen again system was restarting.

Then I had a spare hard disk. I connected that and installed windows xp in it, then I connected my second hard disk also.

The second hard disk is detected in device manager, but not showing in disk management.

Can i get the disk working with out loosing data?


Thank you

 

Hello, I would suggest booting off XP CD. After setup loads press r then choose recovery console. Choose your XP installation and log-in. Then type fixboot X: where X: is the drive that doesn't show up in disc management. Hopefully this will solve it.

 

@juju68
Thank you.

 

Glad to help. It did help, correct?