OS Does Not Recognize New Hard Drives

Looking at the device manager is the controller seen in good working order?  You might be better off setting the drives to masters if they are connected to separate IDE channels or specifying one as the master while the other as a slave if they are connected to the same channel.  Using cable select might be the reason the drives are not seen. The cable select option requires a special cable which I suspect is not the type of cable you have.

If the IDE controller is on the mother board, can you see the drives in the BIOS?  You did not include the type of hardware you have so not sure what else to suggest.

>> I just installed two new Maxtor MaXLine hard drives
RAID?

>> Windows went crazy
What exactly did it do?

Go back to BIOS and restore everything back to its default settings. Check the boot order. Check to make sure that its not trying to boot off SCSI. Whether or not you configured it for RAID check that too.

-Ray

You may have to format them..

Follow arnold's advice and make sure everything is good in the device manager and that your controllers are not showing a problem. Then in disk management try clicking on "Action" at the top and choose "Rescan Disks".

If you still cannot see them... do you also have some SATA drives in the mix? What other hard drives are in there?

Try with only one of the new drives attached at first. If nothing, set one drive's jumper to master and the other's to slave. Make sure that the master is sitting at the end of the cable, and the slave is in between.

if the above does not help, test the drives on another PC to be sure about their status, 1 or both can be bad - DOA

Wow - thanks for the quick replies!

From the top:

@ Arnold - The controller shows up fine (This device is working properly.).  I changed the jumpers as you recommended, with no luck (master/slave, same IDE cable).  It is a Dell PowerEdge 600SC.  It has two original hard drive, one at 80GB and the other at 160 GB.  The new drives are 500GB each.  These are meant to be additional drives, not replacements.

@ Raymun - No, not attempting RAID.  Windows recognized the drives when I first booted back up after installing them.  It "Found new hardware" for each drive, an IDE controller for each drive (don't ask me why, they're on the same cable), and then briefly flashed a few other things I didn't catch.  A peek in the hardware manager reveals nothing that isn't working properly (no yellow exclamation marks or red X's).  I restored the BIOS back to the original settings, checked the boot order, etc., with no luck.

@ killbrad - Why?  What did he do?  Maxtor has a utility that is supposed to format the drives after Windows recognizes them, but it won't run because it can't find the drives.

@ Trilotech - Rescanning the disks in Disk Management did nothing.  There are no SATA drives in this server.  There are the original two hard drives mentioned above.

@ Rindi - Thanks, but no luck here either.

@ Nobus - Haven't had a chance to test this yet, but I will.  Thanks.


Thanks to all of you for the prompt help!

Try Nobus' idea and also try one of the drives as a replacement to one of your others ALREADY working. This will help determine if it is a controller problem or drive problem. If the drive is seen plugged into the controller the other drives are on, then it is a controller problem.

I am unfamiliar with the exact motherboard hardware you have, but you might be plugged into a specific ATA RAID port or other similar specific controller.

One question before I do that - We have one of the disks partioned into two partitions, with the second partition being spanned over to the other drive.  By unplugging one of the drives, wouldn't I be screwing up the other?

Relevant server specs matching the service tag number from Dell's support site are listed below.  Not sure if this gives you enough information about the motherboard, but here you go:

1      1W392      PROCESSOR, 80532, 2.4G, 512K, 533, SOCKET N, C1
1      5Y002      ASSEMBLY, TRAY, PLANAR, 533
1      6R132      ASSEMBLY, CABLE, DORADO/ATHENS/TUALATIN/ALMODOR, FLOPPY DRIVE
1      8R198      ASSEMBLY, CABLE, 40P, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), 2DROP, 18IN
2      9U174      DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 512, 266M, 64X72, 8K, 184, 1U
1      0Y750      COMPACT DISK DRIVE, 680M, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), 5.25" FORM FACTOR, 48X, SAMSUNG, BLACK
1      9Y240      HARD DRIVE, 120GB, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), 7.2K, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 1IN, SEAGATE
1      9Y240      HARD DRIVE, 120GB, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), 7.2K, 3.5" FORM FACTOR, 1IN, SEAGATE
1      360MG      CARD (CIRCUIT), CONTROLLER, ADAPTER, 39160, PCI/S, U160M
1      293YN      ASSEMBLY, CABLE, TWISTED PAIR, HARD DRIVE, S, 2DROP
1      U1868      TAPE BACKUP UNIT, 20GB, HALF HEIGHT, INTERNAL, Digital Data Storage type 4, SEAGATE, V7
1      3R994      ASSEMBLY, CABLE, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), HARD DRIVE, 1X2

Yes you would screw it up!! So don't do that...

If you STILL have a CD-ROM or other ATA device then you would NOT have room for 2 drives which makes me think you might be plugging into some kind of RAID port. Try plugging one of your new hard drives into the controller that your CD-ROM is on.

Yes, do not unplug the drives.

By my count you have three devices on the on board IDE controller. Do you have an additional IDE controller to which you are connecting the two additional drives?
Does the BIOS support a 500GB Maxtor drives?  Do you have a way to test the drives in a different system?  Did you buy an additional IDE controller from Dell to which the two new drives are attached?

@ Trilotech - Okay, so here's my new game plan:

1.  Try one new hard drive with cable from something else (tape drive, whatever).
2.  If no joy, try hard drives in completely separate system.
3.  Hire someone with more patience to come fix my mess!

@ Arnold - There was an unused, blue...controller thingy that I plugged the drives into.  It looks exactly the same as the other blue slots that the original hard drives are running on.  It could be meant for something else, but if it fits, I use it.

So I can order another controller card doobob and connect it there?  When I go to Newegg, what exactly do I look for?

Either way, since people have shown up at work, it looks like I'll get some overtime tomorrow.

I really appreciate everybody's help and patience with this!

Sounds good! That tape drive might be SCSI, however, so use the CD-ROM cable!

When you have a chance have a look around the controller and see whether there is anything indicating what it is.  Like trilotech suggested, it could very well be an IDE RAID controller interface.  Check the device manager and see whether you have a scsi and raid controllers section and whether there is a controller listed there.
The listing from dell did not reference any RAID controller, but you may have omitted it from the list.

I believe that this:

CARD (CIRCUIT), CONTROLLER, ADAPTER, 39160, PCI/S, U160M

Is a SCSI controller. COuld be wrong, but sure looks like one and adaptec has a 39160 controller.

No RAID controllers, but there is the Adaptec SCSI 39160 controller (listed twice, for reasons beyond me).  However, this is an external card.  The tape drive listed is an IDE device that is no longer in use.  We have a tape changer that weighs more than my car that connects to the SCSI card.

Device Manager shows 2 Primary IDE Channels, 2 Secondary IDE Channels, and 2 Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controllers.

Not that I know what any of that means.

If the third IDE controller isn't enabled in the BIOS, how did Windows recognize the fact that new hardware had been attached?  I'll still check, of course, I'm just curious.

Thanks!

I do not know why, but have seen it happen before...

I can only guess that even though it is disabled, because you have something plugged into it some other settings could have changed on your other controllers...

Try this...

Computer Management (Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management)
Then go to DISK management
See if the drive is listed (possibly without a drive letter)
By default it should say XP detected new disk would you like to initialize it and assign a drive letter.  Follow screen

Thanks, but I've tried that to no avail.  Windows cannot see the drive at all.

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I called out someone who gets paid more than I do to look at this.

He narrowed it down to a bad lead from the power supply.

Since it's proprietary, I had to order it today from Dell.

Not sure when it'll get here, but it better be soon.

Not sure how to split the points up, but I hate to keep you all waiting for the shipment.