PC not "seeing" 2nd HD

Well,,, I've done it now!

I have an old 2GB HD and a new 40GB HD. I have been using both for a while. I am running win 98se on the 2GB HD and I was running WIN2000 pro and Server on the 40GB HD.
Well, I decided to get rid of the WIN 2000 stuff for now, and ghost my Win 98 image on the 40GB HD. I reformatted the two partitions with the WIN 2000 stuff and then ghosted the WIN 98 image to another unused partition. Now I made sure that the partitions are all FAT 32 b/c Win98 cannot "see" the NTFS partitions. Now I cannot boot to the 40GB HD Win 98 image. Nothing happens. I have checked the jumper settings, tried it with and without the old HD plugged in. (Master / Slave / etc...)
Now to make things worse I used a utility tool disk to rewrite the boot sector of the 40GB HD. ( I think it wrote to the whole disk, not to the partition I wanted.) -- That did not fix anything.. oops!
Now when I boot up to the old Win 98se 2GB HD. Everything still works, but I cannot "see" the 40GB HD at all.

I would really like to get Win 98se on the 40GB HD and not use the old HD at all. (I think it is dying ... ) I do have a partition on the 40GB HD that I do not want to lose. I did not touch that partition when reformatting and trying to get this working. It has most of my programs that I run on it, as well as a lot of misc important info. So totally reformatting the 40GB HD is not an option.

Any Ideas?


Thanks in advance.

-Charles

 

Were you running an overlay program on the 40gig drive?

 

Overlay program? Not sure ....please explain.

 

The primary partition on the 40GB is not NTFS? Sounds like you did a partition to partition copy, copying the contents of the Win98 partition an NTFS partition. I do this all of the time between NTFS and FAT32 partitions and vica versa with no problems. I still think you have Win2K on an NTFS partition.

 

Before I copied Win 98se from the 2G Fat32 HD to the 40G HD I checked it to make sure it showed 3 blank Fat32 and 1 used (programs and data, no OS. ) FAT32 Partitions.
Drives C, D, & E are blank - F is data.

After I copied Win 98 to the 40G HD I could not boot up to it. I booted up on the old 2G HD and I could see the new Win98se partition on the 40G HD and the blank partitions and the Data partition. All FAT 32. After I messed with the boot sector, that is when I lost all contact with the 40G HD.

 

I did Ghost the old HD to the new Partition on the new HD using Norton Ghost.
Fdisk won't work. Since it only shows the Win98 from the old 2G HD, no other partitions to choose from. (I lost contact with the new HD after I messed with the boot sector. Before I did that, I could boot up on the old 2G HD and see the new Win98se partition on the 40G HD and the other 3 partitions. Now they arent there at all. The40G HD is not showing up at all.)
Just wondering if it could be something in the boot area I screwed with.

 

So, currently, if I'm understanding correctly....you can't boot to the 40g drive at all.......and when booting to the smaller drive, you can't see anything on the 40g drive? Is that correct?

 

Yes that is correct.
I could see the larger drive (but not boot to it) before I messed around with it. Now I don't see it at all.
I'm off to work, so I will check back tonight.
Thanks.

 

I'm still curious if perhaps on the smaller drive there is the software overlay program that I suggested earlier. Since you said it was your 'old' drive, I'm thinking that perhaps when that drive was setup, you needed the software overly (like EZ Drive or MaxBlast) so that the bios would see the whole drive. I realize it is a small drive by today's standards, but my first 2.1 gig drive was setup that way.....when the small drive boots, do you see anything scrolling by similar to the words, 'to boot to a floppy disk, hit the control key' ?