System having problem detecting hard drive

[marktan1]

Hi... i have just bought a Western Digital Enhanced IDE 80GB Hard drive as a add on drive. When i installed into my system, my com detected the drive and updated the bios automatically. but when i enter windows, in "my computer", it does not reflect the drive. Under "System properties", "Device manager", "Disk drive", there is a new input, "Generic IDE Disk type 02". But there is no drive letter assigned to it. I do not know how to do it. The jumpers and cable settings for slave and masters were installed correctly. Can it be due to my system motherboard being too old? if so, how do i solve the problem?

my current system specs:

COMPAQ PRESARIO 5170
Quantum Bigfoot 6GB (master)
Western Digital 80GB (intended slave)
pentium II 350MHz
Windows 98
320MB RAM


Please help me.... my current hard drive have only bout 400MB of free space left..... extremely low... so i really need this hard drive to be working....

Thanks in advance to those kind souls...

[Jarhed7276]

It sounds like you need to partition and format the drive.

IN Win98 use the fdisk and format command.

Use fdisk to create logical partitions. Then use the format command to format the drives.

When you use the fdisk command make sure you are partitioning the slave drive otherwise you will erase your master drive.

[marktan1]

i tried. there was no drive letter assigned to it. so when i use the command, which drive should i refer fdisk to?

[dusty825]

Just click on the drive, right click and a box of options will come up. Click on the format one.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Did you use the floppy disk that came with the drive to try the partition and format?

If not, boot from that floppy and it will more than likely detect both drives.

Make sure you choose the right drive.

Hard Disk Setup - Partition and Format

Bill