I just installed a new HD with XP on it and tried to use the old HD with ME as the slave. I have checked the jumpers and there ok, the slave (old drive) shows up in the BIOS as slave but I go to open My Computer theres only the new one. I looked in Computer MANAGEMENT and the slave is there and healthy and active but theres no letter assigned to it and I cant assign one, it wont let me. I dont WANT to format this drive, it has files that I need, so how would I make this drive show up. If it matters the new drive is NTFS and the old one is a FAT, not sure 16 or 32. Thanks for any help.FAT is not the issue. It may be as simple as it was originally partitioned as a primary drive, and two primary drives cannot be seen at the same time. I would suggest booting with a Linux Live CD and then copy your files to the main hard drive, which of course should be C. Then delete the partitions on the old drive and  recreate it and format.

The Linux CD writes no files to your hard drive, so it is safe. I suggest Linspire as it is the most Windows like and easiest for Linux newbies. Just keep in mind that it is running slow because it is running from the CDROM.

Here's a link:

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/distro.php?distro=58

Just burn the ISO with Nero or whatever you're using.You can have more than one Primary drive, but only one can be Active at a time.
Active partitionif you just want to use it as a slave. Fdisk it and format it.He has stated he doesn't want to format at this time as there are files on there that need to be saved first...

patio.  And I have given him the Linux solution....