After system crash I reformatted the master hard drive and installed Windows ME. I did not notice at this point if the slave drive was recognised. However because no drivers were available for the monitor in ME I found the original disks from Packard Bell and restored the system using the Packard Bell restore system with 98SE. The base system only had one drive and windows is only recognising the master ( original drive). In the bios (Ambibios Ver 1.16)the drive settings are set to auto but no details are shown of either drive. In Windows the master is shown as 20gb drive. The slave drive is a 60gb drive but not shown. How can I force the bios and windows to recognise the slave?

With the cmos settings at AUTO the drives should show on the posting screen. The packard bell probably shows its logo instead of a posting screen. You should be able to hit TAB or ESC to show the posting screen. Or go into cmos and see if you can enable the diagnostic screen. If the slave then shows on the posting screen the problem is likely in windows. If it doesn't show then you have a problem with the drive or its connections.

If it shows there, then in windows run fdisk. If windows sees 2 drives then fdisk will have an option 5 to switch between the two drives. If so, then switch to the second drive and choose option 4. Exactly what does it say?

Windows doesn't assign a drive letter until the drive is partitioned. If that drive failed and perhaps lost the partitioning info (or you deleted its partition) then that may be why it's not showing.

It's also possible there's a problem with the IDE controllers. Go to CONTROL PANEL--SYSTEM--DEVICE MANAGER and see if any problems shows there. Then go to CONTROL PANEL--SYSTEM--PERFORMANCE and see if anything is running in msdos compatibility mode. IDE controller problems may be solved by updating the motherboard/chipset drivers.

First of all, many Packard Bell computers use a setup partition. This includes all the software and drivers to restore the system. All they provide you when this system is used is a restore floppy. In this case, I hope you didn't delete any partitions (fdisk).

Regardless of this, it is the bios that recognises the drives. It passes the information to windows before windows loads. So basically you can ignore windows for the time being.

Since bios is not seeing the drive, you will need to check the physical connection to the drive. I'd usually suggest checking jumper settigs, but it doesn't sound like these would have been touched.

In bios, there usually is a setting to disable the secondary IDE. If you cleared the cmos memory, this may need changing to enabled. If you didn't clear the CMOS, then doing so can solve a lot of problems.

I suspect there's something you left out in your original question. If the BIOS was untouched, your slave drive would be properly recognized...so either you physically tampered with the drives, or you tampered with the BIOS settings.

"because no drivers were available for the monitor in ME I found the original disks from Packard Bell and restored the system"

Monitors don't need drivers...video cards need drivers.

Thanks for your replies, as soon as I get time I will try your suggestions and let you know the results.

I am having the same problem and posted under refomatted-Holzman earlier in the week. I have reformatted, got it to reboot in 95, upgraded to ME whish is what I had it in before the reformat. Now my upgraded hard drive isn't recognized. I tried to follow what was said here. I ran the F disk and it sai that I only have one drive (it is the the 4GB that was orginal not the 20GB that was installed later). I have SYM53C416 problem in "other devices" in the device manager. Don't know what that is. It calls for a driver and I don't know what to put in. I also didn't know what the "cmos" was. so I was stuck on where to go from here.

That looks to be a SCSI card for an HP scanner. It's probably not related to the missing drive.

If fdisk doesn't see the slave hard drive then:

1) The drive is bad.
2) The drive is connected or jumpered wrong (or a bad cable).
3) The IDE controller it's connected to isn't enabled in cmos/bios setup.
4) It's not identified right in cmos/bios setup.
5) The drive is too large for the bios to see.

The drive worked fine until I reformatted. I would think that 3 or 4 are my problem, but I don't know how to correct them.

There should be a message on the screen when you first start the computer about what key to press to get into 'setup'. It's usually DEL, F1 or F2. Then you'd need to look through the setup pages for the IDE controllers and drive ID.

This is where I am. I went into the setup and found the IDE Condtroller on the Main page. I have a Primary IDE Master (WDC WD205BA), Primary IDE Slave (HP CD- writer that I had installed), Secondary IDE Master (CD-Rom (factory installed)), Secondary IDE (0MB). So now I still don't know how to make it recognize the after factory 20GB hard drive that I had installed. I didn't know what to do once I got that far.

The primary IDE master that's showing is the 20 gig. I thought you said that's the one it's not seeing. Then it's showing the 2 cdrom devices and nothing else.

Both controllers are enabled since it's seeing stuff on both the primary and secondary.

If you actually have the 4 gig attached (along with the other 3 drives), it must be as secondary slave because that's all that's left. You should probably connect and jumper it as either primary slave or secondary master. Make sure you have the jumpers correct when moving drives around.

I didn't think that the 20 Gig HD was recognized because I only have 4 Gig of HD when I go into the Properties and I don't have another drive showing. This copmuter had a zip factory installed. It shows, the two Cds and a floppy besides the C drive. Could I just unattach the 20 gig and reattach it? Would the computer then recognize it as it did when I installed it? I'm not real great at this as you can already tell. It has been several years since I installed the 20 and don't really remember what all it intailed. Thank you very much for all of your help.

Could the 4 gig be connected to an add-on IDE card? That would be the only way it wouldn't show in cmos/bios setup.

Otherwise if the 4 gig isn't showing in cmos/bios setup then windows isn't seeing or using it. The system must be booting from the 20 gig.

You might run fdisk again. If it see 2 drives there'll be an option 5 to switch between them. Choose option 4 and post back exactly what it says.

You won't do any damage by disconnecting the 20 gig (well, as long as the power is off). I imagine if you do that you'll get an error something like 'no operating system' since the bios won't find any drive to boot from.

Oh, and it may only be showing 4 gig in 'my computer' because it's only partitioned to 4 gig. Fdisk, option 4, will show if that's the case. Or could it be it's only showing 4 gig of free space?

Hi:
I just found this thread today by doing a google search using: "recognize secondary hard drive". I have the same (or, similar) problem. I just installed a slave hard drive on the primary IDE and EVERYTHING sees it except Windows Explorer. The cmos (set to auto) picked it up immediately! Using Fdisk, I created a partition and a logical drive "E:". But when I rebooted, started Windows and opened Windows Explorer, there was no E:. I've tried searching for new hardware, I checked device manager to see if both drives showed up - they do. My PC came with logical drives A: (floppy), C: and D: (the master HD) and G: (the CD-ROM). I cannot understand why E: doesn't show up. Suggestions?

...if it ain't broke, fix it anyway...

Does it show in 'my computer'? What OS are you using? If the answers are 'no' and '98' I'd suspect it's in msdos compatibility mode. Check the last paragraph in my #1 above.

You might also benefit by starting a new thread in the appropriated forum. Just go to 'general forums' in the top left column and click into the appropriate OS forum.

OK, thanks.
My answers would be "no" and "ME". So, I'm going to go post under Windows ME. I examined both drives in Devices Manager, and while there were no error messages, there was a distinct difference...
But, more about that on the new thread!

...if it ain't broke, fix it anyway...