Ok, I've been running Windows 2000 Pro for a while now.. I don't even know how long. On my MB I have a 5 hardrives and an additional DVD drive in this config: IDE1 Channel 1: WD 8GB Channel 2: Maxtor 8GB IDE 2 Channel 1: Maxtor 16GB Channel 2: Samsung 608 DVD - then I have a Maxtor/Promise Ultra ATA/100 card with a Maxtor 40 GB and a Fujitsu 20 GB in master - slave config on 1 cable. I had no problems in Windows 2000 or NT before. All my partitions were/are NTFS; the only drive that is split up is the 40 GB is split into 3 equal parts. The problem is that now that I've switched to XP the XP does not see the 40 GB's partitions. I've tried switching to seperate channels and removing the other Fujitsu attached to the cable. The drive controller is listed as the Promise Ultra ATA IDE controller and all the HDs are listed under the disk drives listing in Device Manager. When viewed in Computer Management all the drives are listed as healthy and operating except for the 40 GB Maxtor; there are no assigned drive letters for the disk drive, the coloring is black and not seperated into partitions like it should be, and it says unallocated. The only rightclick option given is New Partition, which I assume would destroy the information that is on the drive. Why this has happened I do not know. But I do need access to that drive; to all the partitions on it. If I have to I'll put 2000 back on, I would just reformat my Primary System Drive and start from scratch. If anybody has answer please please please email me or post.

I have read the the drive must be formated in the new XP computer. I have been trying how this is done on Win Xp. If you find out let me know. Harold

Why this specific drive though? And if that's the case can I reload another O.S. or put the HD in another computer so that I can pull the information off first?

Try partitioning it again in XP and see if that helps.

I don't want to lose all the information though. If I partition it I'll probably lose all the information.

I had the same problem. I cannot get my ATA100 card to work. There are not drivers yet as far as I can tell. SUX... I also loaded XP and lost the drive. It blew away the allocation table and made the drive useless until I repartitioned and formatted... Sucked! I actually copied over all that I wanted to save, did the full new install... and BAM! Gone..... Nothing I could do... It did not see the drive on anoter machine as well... Tried all that I could think of.... With a new clean install, the system flies though... So far I like the OS.... Time to reload all the data though. That blows!

A quick comment about not accessing the data in XP. Try taking the drive off the Maxtor card and, at least temporarily, putting the drive on your motherboard's IDE (even if you have to bump a CD-ROM) - you may be able to read the files and copy them off... Here's my L-O-N-G story... I had a slightly different problem, but the Maxtor ATA-100 card is giving me real headaches. Where I went wrong was I didn't apply the Maxtor drivers before connecting the hard drive. I believe that you must install the Maxtor drivers, power off, and then connect the drive... Take what I say with a grain of salt because my problems haven't gone away - but here are some of my experiences: 1) I installed XP with 2 hard drives connected, on on my motherboard's primary IDE, and another on the Maxtor card. The card showed as a Promise... under device manager. I think I had partitioned the second drive before starting the install, but that's a bit muddy to me... Anyhow, my system was generating crash logs at a phenomenal rate (sometimes up to 5 per reboot). I installed the Maxtor drivers and the crashes stopped. (It gets weirder though...) 2) The Maxtor drivers can be found here: http://www.maxtor.com/Softwaredownload/default.htm More instructions (not too useful) are here: http://www.maxtor.com/products/UltraATA100/TechSupport/default.htm I went to the Device Manager and chose to update the drivers. I had to specify the driver myself (not just the location). XP gives a warning about the driver being unsigned, but I went ahead and it completed. On reboot the device appears as "Maxtor ATA-100..." (or something like that) so the driver was updated. 3) Now it gets really strange... With the updated driver (but the original partitioning) I could read and write data on the drive. However, I could not delete files/folders. It would tell me that they couldn't be found. 4) I slaved the drive to the Primary IDE on the motherboard and it worked fine. In fact it behaved perfectly. 5) I put it back on the Maxtor card - still couldn't delete files. 6) I tried putting the second HD on the motherboard's Secondary IDE and moving my CD-RW and DVD-ROM to the Maxtor card. Windows Explorer started to refresh very slowly... So I yanked the Maxtor card again and stuck with the mobo... (I also tried moving it to different slots, etc. - no good.) 7) I brought the card to work and stuck it in another machine. I installed the drivers before connecting a drive. I rebooted and installed a new, unpartitioned drive. I partitioned it in XP and it worked like a charm. A-HA!!! (Or so I thought.) 8) I took the card home again. I installed the card and the drivers. I shut down. I installed an old 1.2GB drive and partitioned it in XP - sweet! 9) I took my original 2nd HD and connected it to wipe the partitions. No good - that bad boy hung me after the Login screen - on the Maxtor or mobo controller. AARGH!!! 10) I scrambled around and made some Partition Magic 7.0 diskettes to clear the partitions... Aaahhh, it booted again. Now I repartitioned the drive in XP. It worked! All was well! I even rebooted as a sort of "pinch me" deal. 11) I went back to work the next morning and told my co-workers that I had slain the beast. 12) I went home and started up IE to connect (through ICS on my wife's machine) but forgot to re-enable ICS first... I tried to refresh the page in IE after starting ICS and the system locked up... I had to do a hard reboot. 13) When it started back up it was back to its old tricks & froze after login. 14) I moved the hard drive back to a slave on the mobo Pri-IDE and everything was peachy again. It has been two days since I last touched the Maxtor ATA-100 card. It is sitting in my drawer. My system has behaved admirably despite my many attempts to perturb it. I may try reinstalling XP from scratch, but I'm not real excited about that... I may also put it back in at work and see if it tanks there eventually. I'm not a happy camper.