OT : SCSI drive question
 

On my PC I had a SATA drive as C: and a SCSI as E:. I have added a second SATA drive. My PC sees the SATA drives but not the SCSI anymore. I have removed the second SATA to go back to original and it still won't see the SCSI. The SCSI is visible in the BIOS and is visible in Windows, except it does not have a drive letter. I set up a partition on it with a drive letter (did not format), but now it says the drive is not formatted.

I used this drive as a backup and have data I can't lose. Anybody know why XP suddenly doesn't see the drive properly? Any solution to getting this resolved?

thanks
Fred

Have you tried going into control panel/admin tools/comp management/disk manager See if the scsi drive has a letter designated to it and if not, give it one.

I'm NOT a super IT guy, but I've been there before, and kinda remember what I did to get XP to recognize my drives.

That is exactly what I did, and that is when I got the message that said the drive was not formatted.

Fred

Damn.

Maybe take the drive elsewhere and get the data off it before further attempts?

Well the first suggestion was good.

The second is an ownership/permissions type issue. I had a similiar situation a long ways back so I don't remember the details, sorry.

But, pull the second sata, so you see the SCSI properly again, clone/copy or ?? to a USB, then you can trash it IF needed. Check the backed up data first.

I tried that and the same thing happens. XP sees the drive with no drive letter and I am wondering if the settings don't travel with the drive?

When I got the PC 3 years ago and installed the SCSI, it just recognized the card automatically and everything came up. I don't remember if it required me to format the drive, at that time it was empty.

Have you tried uninstalling the SCSI card, reboot and reinstall it? If it detected it the first time, maybe it will do it the second time ... but what do I know:rolleyes:

This may be a long shot, but it seems that the BIOS on many computers gets confused if you mix SCSI and (in my case) IDE drives. On two different Tyan motherboards (one dual Xeon and one dual Athlon) I saw what you describe when adding or removing IDE drives. I had to clear the BIOS before things went back to normal. Remember to write down your BIOS settings, since they will have to be redone.

That may not be what is causing you issues, but it did for me.

Are there any other SCSI deviced attached to the computer?

Is the SCSI card onboard or a PCI card?

Does it show a letter drive (presumably in XP) with no capacity or free space?

I do have Tyan motherboard with dual Athlon.... How do you clear the BIOS? There are tons of settings, are there specific ones I need to worry about?

The SCSI card is a PCI card and the disk drive is the only SCSI device, besides the card. Originally it showed up in XP as unpartioned space. I assigned it a drive letter so now it shows up under My Computer, but if I click on it the messages says the drive is unformatted.

thanks
Fred

I would try to boot up to a linux live cd or something and see if you can mount the drive in there, or try one of the windows pe boot discs with disk untilities.

Sounds to me like the partition table could have been somehow damaged - though havent had that happen to me in more years than I can count on both hands.

I have played with some win pe boot disks (bascially it is a stripped down version of windows xp that is cd bootable and runs off the cd.) some people have made boot discs based off of it, with multiple utilities on it for fixing things.

I would def not try to do anything with the drive, like format it or etc.

you did say you partitioned the drive then added a letter, or you just assigned a drive letter?

Strictly it is called "CMOS Reset." You do it with jumper J21 on the lower back portion of the motherboard, at least on an S2460 (see the Tyan site for a manual if that is not the one you are using). Power down and disconnect the power supply, move the jumper from pins 1 and 2 to pins 2 and 3, wait about three seconds, and then close pins 1 and 2 again. Power up and reconfigure the BIOS.

This may work or not, but it has for me on those occasions when nothing else seemed to work. That was on a Tyan S2460 and S2663. My K7X Pro has never needed this, but it is straight SCSI other than an IDE DVD.

I agree with the comment suggesting use a live CD. I prefer FreeSBIE, but then I'm a BSD guy.

BTW, here's a link to the Tyan manuals:

http://www.tyan.com/archive/support/html/manuals.html

Scroll down to the Socket A section.

Cool, thanks. I I do the reset, will it forget EVERYTHING? Or will it go back to some default mode?