98 doesn't detect drive

Hello All,

Need some urgent help here.

Just reformat a friend's computer with window 98 SE, when I tried to put a physical second Hard drive, 98 doesn't assign a drive letter to it. When I looked at the bios, device manager, they indicated that there is a second physical drive, yet I don't know how to make 98 recognizes it, someone suggests that I have to use fdisk, but I am not very familiar with it. Can you all help?

Thanks so much

First off, what size is the HDD. If its a large HDD (<160GB) win98 won't see it, and if the hardware is old, you would need smaller yet (I had a BX440 machine that wouldn't recognize larger than 80GB)

For FDISK, go <A HREF="http://www.bootdisk.com" target="_new">here</A> and download a WIN98SE bootdisk if you don't already have one. Reboot the computer with the floppy in the drive, and when you get the DOS prompt (A:\) type fdisk and hit enter. After selecting yes for Large Disk Access, you should see 5 options, the last one being "Change Physical Disk" or something similar.

Change your disk to the secondary drive, and then create a partition (or more than one) and exit fdisk. you will be told you have to reboot and format.

Easy as that.

Spec:
Intel P4 2.4B
MSI 645E Max-U Mobo
1GB DDR333
R9600XT 128MB
SB Live 5.1
WD 60GB
Maxtor 120GB
LG DVD+-R/RW
WIN2K PRO SP4

In that case, fdisk is not the way to go as you will lose all information on the drive.

Have you tried a diagnostic disk? You can download it from the manufactures web site. Most include tools to test the disk, make sure its still OK (which it should be).

Other than that, formatting is probably your best bet.

Spec:
Intel P4 2.4B
MSI 645E Max-U Mobo
1GB DDR333
R9600XT 128MB
SB Live 5.1
WD 60GB
Maxtor 120GB
LG DVD+-R/RW
WIN2K PRO SP4