No fixed disks present on my harddrive

If FDISK says "no fixed disks" then your disk is not properly installed.  Check:

1) The MASTER/SLAVE jumper setting.  Usually the disk will be setup to be MASTER.

2) Your cable connections.  Be sure you are plugged in properly to the PRIMARY IDE channel and that if another drive is also plugged into the same cabel that one is MASTER and one is SLAVE.

3) The POWER CONNECTOR.

Have you tried this drive on a different controller or in another computer.  If you try it on a different controller and it is auto detected then the other controller is bad or not working properly.
Is it set up properly in the BIOS?  Is it autodetected or did you have to put the HD specs in manually?
Obviously if the BIOS does not see it then you can't FDISK it.

Assuming it's an IDE drive, I think the above goes a long way. If it's SCSI, there are a few additional considerations, like host adapter BIOS enabled, SCSI ID set to 0 or 1, correct termination set, etc.
Regards
/RID

you know what they say about assumptions ...
I generally assume that it is IDE since that is popular and cheaper.  But I could be wrong ...

Yeah, I was just trying to coax more info from the questioner...
/RID

in your BIOS there may be an option to "auto-detect" your hard disk - try selecting the option that has LBA opposite it and then exit and choose the save and exit option to exit the bios. At present your hard disk may be set to auto and not recognising your hard disk.
cheers, Pete

If it's a Maxtor drive, it may have special software that must load after the post before you boot to your boot-floppy.  Maxtor in particular uses MaxBlast- after the post, check for a message that says something like press A to boot to floppy drive or C to boot to hard disk- this is quite common.  You will need to wait until this pops up before booting to your floppy.

-FFish

If you are trying to use FDISK under windows, it will not work.  There are two ways of partitioning a Hard Drive.  One is Through windows using Partition Magic the other is FDISK.

Use you start-up disk to boot the PC. Choose either boot process (with or without CDROM support). From the prompt, type FDISK and it will take to the FDISK window.

wlennon

BTW-I have three Maxtors, 80gb, 60gb and 30gb.  I have never used the Maxtor software for formatting the drive.  The only time I did use it was to move the entire contents from one drive to another, but I had already formatted the HDD with WinME.

Hi all,

This question has been open for awhile. I am going to allow feedback from the questioner and experts. If it is not resolved, I will delete or accept an answer based on the info I have been given. Experts, feel free to offer input. I will monitor this question for a period of 5-7 days and come back and evaluate the situation.

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ComTech
Community Support Moderator

Afafco does not appear to be responsive.  Split the points.