2nd HD not assigned drive letter

[Guest]

I am running a 40GB Maxtor and a 17GB Western Digital in a master/slave config on the primary IDE channel of my ASUS A7M266 mobo. Both drives are recognized at system start up, in fdisk, and in control panel, but the WD drive is not assigned a drive letter in DOS or Windows ME. I was running the WD as the 2nd drive in my old system under WinME and had no problems. If I connect the Maxtor to the secondary IDE channel I can get the WD assigned as the C: in DOS, but it won't show up in Windows. I have too much data on the drive to simply format it, and xcopy-ing all the files to the Maxtor in DOS would be extremely tedious. Is there a registry hack or some other solution to give my drive a letter assignment in Windows?

 

[NickM]

What is the configuration for every HDD? For example: the WD is a primary master.
Have you checked the jumpers on the HDD(s) and on the CD-ROM whether they match your configuration?

First of all to isolate the problem, lets talk about your WD first. Disconnect all other IDE drives except the WD.

Does the WD work as the only one master HDD on the IDE controller(no more drives connected)? Does it boot itself?
You told about the FDISK. Try FDISK with the only one WD on the system. After you exit from the FDISK, can you switch to C:? If C: is OK, can you run DIR on it?
Then what can you say about connecting the WD as a secondary master (without CD-ROM) then? And as a slave after that?
And tell us not only whether it is possible to assign the letter, but also: can you read that C: ? You tell about important information on the WD. Is it accessable from anything? I'm very sorry for so many questions. If it is accessable, and it was working and it is working as bootable master, and it had/has Windows installed on it, can you see another (new Maxtor) in this configuration? And copy all your information from WD to Maxtor? Or Maxtor is also suffering from no "letter assigned in Windows"? Or it is not accessable?

What about BIOS screen? Is there AUTO for all the drives?
I don't know what is your BIOS. Sometimes its settings for BOOT FIRST: IDE 0 (or1, 2, so on) cause the problem. Just double check what you have.

And some more questions just for clarity: What does it mean your master/slave? Is it something special allowing jumperless master/slave?
What is that Control Panel you mentioned? Are we talking about Windows Control Panel?

By the way, if your WD is healthy by itself, you don't need to warry about reformatting it before you saved all your information. If you had normally installed Windows on your Maxtor, that Windows always would recognize another healthy HDD properly atached to the IDE controller (we are talking about relatively new computers with large HDD support and compatible file systems).

Try another computer with both IDE proved working with more than one HDD. Just temporarely attach your HDDs for copying the information. Or, who knows, try another ribbon belts on your computer.