Thanks for that info about the cables I don't really want to do that is there any other way? The man at the shop said the only way is to format it but it has my dissertation on it help!!!! Right it's the existing hard drive (slave) the first partition (E:) is unaccessible but F: the extended partition is ok. In system I can't change the drive letters they are disabled, I can see the partitions in fdisk. I can see it in my computer but cannot see the size of the space remaining and can't open it. In System performance, it says it's using MS-DOS compatability mode file system. In DOS, when you try dir it, it brings up the same message when you try and access the CD-ROM without a cd in it. Please help!!! Christine

boot from floppy and at a command prompt copy the needed files over to the c:\ drive. remember that because of long filenames you will see and key in abcdef~1 rather than abcdefghi, so to make it simple copy them to a short name . but you really should make sure that your drives are configured correctly. it is also very likely that the original drive is fat16 . if you formatted the new one with win95/98 it may well be fat32 which could explain it. in that case you could , at a command prompt after booting from a floppy disk, make a directory called eg store by: md c:\store then copying over erverything from the old drive to the new folder. then run windows and fdisk and format the old drive also under win95/98 making it also fat32. then both drives should behave.

Howdy, First it doesn't matter if its FAT 16 or FAT 32. The reason FAT 32 was created was to break the 2gig partition limit, it has nothing to do with long file names, Nada. Anyways, take it to another tech and see what they have to say, its really hard to call this one without being there since I can't see what is going on. Have you tried making the slave a master and then boot from a boot disk and see if you can access the drive? Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude.

the reason I mentioned long filenames bollock brain is that when you see them in dos it could throw you if you hadn't seen the ~ before.

Hi! I don't know what the problem is so can't help but here is a note of humor which contains a large grain of truth. Come on, Format that drive. My faucet leaks should I blow up the house and rebuild it? Come on, Format that drive. My car has developed a miss, what should I do? Come on, Format that drive. The picture of my computer monitor is tilted after I bumped it. What oh what should I do? Come on, Format that drive. No matter what the problem is, you will always hear from somewhere..... Come on, Format that drive. That is your cue to tell them to ___ it, because that is the next to LAST resort, LAST being drive replacement. I might suggest that quite often a bootsector virus can cause inability to access a paticular drive so ?did you run a virus check with latest updates? Did you try Nortons DISKDOCTOR? Don't try scandisk as it's method of fixing is equivalent to wiping the realfiles and generating a bunch of nonuse-able trash files. Good Luck! Jones