Solve : Hard disk letter assignment?

1.	Solve : Hard disk letter assignment?
Answer» Hi guys, I installed old hard drive in to my computer as a slave, the BIOS recognize the drive and the computer management does also-but there is no letter assigned to the drive so I can not ACCESS the think. Tried everything that is published to assign letter. PC is Windows XP, hwen instaling the Maxtor drive I remeber that during the Caldera boot there was reference of not enough letters for drives. The hard disk is not formated because I have info on it. any thoughts. :'Is the drive a different format from the one you have going now? (Find out how to find out below) If there is, you'd need to TEMPORARILY set it to MASTER, burn the data to a CD, make the first drive a MASTER again, put the data on the disk, and format the other disk. There is another method, but I don't know that it will work and I need to do a little research on it before I post it. Actually, I'd do the thing I mentioned above anyway; it's good practice. To find out what format your disk is: Right-click on your CURRENT drive and click Properties. Under file system, it will say either NTFS, FAT32, or some other designation. Write down the file type and remember it. If you can, right-click on the letter-less drive and click Properties (This can be done in the My Computer menu if you can see it there, otherwise try to do it in Computer Management) Check the file system. If you cannot, shut down, set the master to that drive and boot, then go to that drive and click Properties. Check the file system of this drive. It may or may not be the same. If it is, that explains the problem neatly. While you're there, outline the procedures I mentioned at the top of my post. If you cannot boot from the older drive, it may be impossible to get the data.Joe...... When yopu go into control panel/Administrative tools/Computer Management /Storage/disk Management ....... does it show your master drive a Disk 0 and the Slave as Disk 1 ? How many partitions do you have on your Disk 0 ? dl65 Quote Joe...... When yopu go into control panel/Administrative tools/Computer Management /Storage/disk Management ....... does it show your master drive a Disk 0 and the Slave as Disk 1 ? How many partitions do you have on your Disk 0 ? dl65 TWO partitions, the back is 2MB and the rest is 67Gig (80G drive) The old hard disk is from XP does have NTFS as does the new system The Bios does show it as slave. I used Maxtor floppy and the CD that originaly came with the hard drive 3 years ago as per Maxtor I do nat have to format the drive to use it again. Quote ... I remeber that during the Caldera boot there was reference of not enough letters for drives. The hard disk is not formated because I have info on it. any thoughts. :' Yes, two thoughts: 1. You cannot have more logical drives than there are letters in the alphabet. If you have used every letter of the alphabet for the logical drives on one hard drive, Windows will not let you add any others to the second hard drive. In that case, you will have to delete at least one logical drive before you can create one logical drive on the other hard drive. 2. You cannot add a drive letter till you create a logical drive in a partition. How many drive letters have you already used?

Answer»

Hi guys, I installed old hard drive in to my computer as a slave, the BIOS recognize the drive and the computer management does also-but there is no letter assigned to the drive so I can not ACCESS the think. Tried everything that is published to assign letter. PC is Windows XP, hwen instaling the Maxtor drive I remeber that during the Caldera boot there was reference of not enough letters for drives.
The hard disk is not formated because I have info on it.
any thoughts. :'Is the drive a different format from the one you have going now? (Find out how to find out below) If there is, you'd need to TEMPORARILY set it to MASTER, burn the data to a CD, make the first drive a MASTER again, put the data on the disk, and format the other disk.

There is another method, but I don't know that it will work and I need to do a little research on it before I post it. Actually, I'd do the thing I mentioned above anyway; it's good practice.

To find out what format your disk is:

Right-click on your CURRENT drive and click Properties.
Under file system, it will say either NTFS, FAT32, or some other designation. Write down the file type and remember it.
If you can, right-click on the letter-less drive and click Properties (This can be done in the My Computer menu if you can see it there, otherwise try to do it in Computer Management)
Check the file system. If you cannot, shut down, set the master to that drive and boot, then go to that drive and click Properties.
Check the file system of this drive. It may or may not be the same. If it is, that explains the problem neatly.
While you're there, outline the procedures I mentioned at the top of my post.

If you cannot boot from the older drive, it may be impossible to get the data.Joe...... When yopu go into control panel/Administrative tools/Computer Management /Storage/disk Management ....... does it show your master drive a Disk 0 and the Slave as Disk 1 ?
How many partitions do you have on your Disk 0 ?

dl65 Quote

Joe...... When yopu go into control panel/Administrative tools/Computer Management /Storage/disk Management ....... does it show your master drive a Disk 0 and the Slave as Disk 1 ?
How many partitions do you have on your Disk 0 ?

dl65

TWO partitions, the back is 2MB and the rest is 67Gig (80G drive)
The old hard disk is from XP does have NTFS as does the new system The Bios does show it as slave. I used Maxtor floppy and the CD that originaly came with the hard drive 3 years ago as per Maxtor I do nat have to format the drive to use it again.
Quote

... I remeber that during the Caldera boot there was reference of not enough letters for drives.
The hard disk is not formated because I have info on it.
any thoughts. :'

Yes, two thoughts:

1. You cannot have more logical drives than there are letters in the alphabet. If you have used every letter of the alphabet for the logical drives on one hard drive, Windows will not let you add any others to the second hard drive. In that case, you will have to delete at least one logical drive before you can create one logical drive on the other hard drive.

2. You cannot add a drive letter till you create a logical drive in a partition.

How many drive letters have you already used?

Solve : Hard disk letter assignment?

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