Drive Letter Assignment

[Alexman1513]

I have a problem getting my computer to recognize a new drive.  I have a main drive attached to the primary IDE port as a master that I partitioned into lots of virtual drives.  I want to get rid of all those drive assignments and copy all the stuff off the drive and reformat it.  So I attached a new unused drive to the secondary IDE port as a master.  The BIOS autodetects it and knows it's there what type and how big etc (Type 80). The drive doesn't show up under My Computer or Explorer.  I checked System Info under components and storage and it sees the drives.  The first one (Type 47)has letters assigned the second one has no letters assigned.  The field is not able to be edited.  There are drivers loaded for both.  What didn't I do or what's wrong and how do I get it to assign a drive letter?  The final drive command is U or something higher than what I stopped at which was P.

[GX1_Man]

A drive has to be jumpered correctly, seen in the BIOS correctly and partitioned to be seen by Windows. Which of these requirements do you not meet?

[Alexman1513]

The drive is jumpered correctly. It's in the master position and like I said the Bios recognizes it in setup and when the computer starts the disk drive status briefly flashes on the screen  I went through setup and it autodetected it and filled in the information under secondary master where it was supposed to be and the main drive also. Both primary and secondary slave positions were listed as not detected as they should be.

So I guess it's #3.  I don't know how to partition or do anything else with a drive that windows doesn't recognize.  That's the problem.  IF it would show up I could do something with it.

[GX1_Man]

Which operating system?

[Alexman1513]

Win 98SE

[GX1_Man]

Boot with the Win98 boot disk.
Type in fdisk and press enter.
Choose create Partition, Extended DOS Partition.
Then it will make it a locical drive.
Reboot and there you go - one more drive letter.

[Alexman1513]

Thank you so much for the information.  Now maybe I'll be able to create some space on my computer.

[GX1_Man]

Glad you are all fixed up and thanks for posting back.