StarDestroyer.Net BBS

How does one do this? I installed a old hard drive, and it is now recognized as the main. This is Ok, but I need access the other one.

Erm, do you perhaps mean that it boots into the old drive instead of the new one? If that is the case, the problem is in the boot order in BIOS (most likely the new drive is SATA while the old one is PATA/ATA133?), which you will need to change.

This is going of the very little info you posted in your opening post. Please elaborate a bit so that we could help you better.

Which one is set as master and which as slave?

1. I'm not sure what your are talking about, but I think it is FAT
2. There are two hard drives, the one that works, and the one I cannot access
3. They both have WinXP, but the one on the original hard drive doesn't work. I get a message that it is corrupted, and I should insert the XP disc. They both have SP2.
4. Proccesor: Athlon 64 3500+ 2.21 GHz

I haven't set master/slave. How does one change master/slave, and how does one change boot order?

It sounds like your old hard drive is just junked.

Do you think the hard drive itself is damaged, or is it possible to erase everything on it and use it empty?

So lets recap, you can succsessfuly boot into windows which function as expected except for that drive not existing? If that is the case then my suggestion is out and probably Ein's as well, altough his might still be relevant (depends on the board and drives in question).

Are both of your hard drives connected by a ribbon-style connector (ie a large connector with a large width and small height and a lot of retangular holes)? If that is the case, and both are on the same cable, then you have to set one as master and one as slave or strange shit (tm) happens, as it could be in your case. To set master and slave you have to manipulate the jumpers on the back of the drive into correct position. There should be a schematic printed on top of the drive explaining the positions for that specific drive. This is basicly Ein's suggestion.

If one or both are connected by a smaller connector that only has one wide hole then it is something else, as well as the second paragraph of my post is out. Same thing if the master and slave situation is ok.

Next (ie the situation is that you can boot into windows, physical sitation ok) try opening up your Computer Management (Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> Computer Management) then select disk management and tell us what the situation there is. Also, going into the Event Viewer then System and seeing if there are any errors regarding the drives would be good (errors are represented by a red circle with a white X).

Sometimes windows won't detect my secondary HD, I get around this by going to the device manager, choosing the disk drives tree, right-clicking on it and selecting from the menu; "Scan for hardware changes"

mmar:
The new HD is on a ribbon connector. The old one is on a smaller connector. The old HD is not in Disk Managment, or in Device Manager. I did not find any errors in the Event Viewer.

Hmmm.... It could be that your SATA controller is not setup (SATA is the standard with the smaller connector). If you are not using an PCI addin card as a controler, you need to reinstall the drivers of your motherboard, preferably the newest version. If you are using a PCI card then you need to install it's drivers. If you don't know, you probably aren't using it, but you can easily check by looking at what the other end of the cable connects to (PCI cards are the cards towards the back of the computer inserted at 90 degree angle into the motherboard).

Before doing that it might be a good idea to check the device menager (right click on my computer -> properties -> hardware -> device manager). There should be a yellow question mark next to some sort of hardware if my guess that this is a driver problem is correct. Anyway, a reinstall of the controller driver (be it integrated on the motherboard or a standalone PCI card) should fix it (unless of course, the drive itself is physicly faulty, but considering that you can get a response out of it when you try to boot into it I think it's, at worst, failing but not dead yet).

EDIT: In the device manager, especialy check under the heading SCSI and RAID controllers (if there isn't one thats a problem) since SATA controllers are put into that group if properly setup (ie drivers corectly installed).

Ok, I reinstalled the SCSI/RAID controllers. There are no question marks, except for unrelated items. (USB, Ethernet, and Video) I still cannot find the missing drive, and there is no unkown hardware.

Ok, that is a bad sign. You should try the drive in another computer to be sure, but I'm getting a feeling something is wrong with it physicly.

The only anomaly that is still nagging at me is that you say that when you try to boot from the old drive you manage to get to a point where windows gets involved (instead of failing when it encounters the drive), yet your install of windows on the new drive can't find it. That shouldn't be happening if there was no driver problem...

The only way for me to try to boot windows from the old drive is to physically unplug the new one. I have not done this in a few days; I will try again later today. I will see if I can rip someone elses compy open and try the old drive. There is a good chance that I can't. Any other suggestions?

Not really. At this point I'd say its probably a hardware problem, however because of what I wrote above it just may still only be a driver problem. Maybe reinstalling (updating) the motherboard drivers, but using the setup system (ie doubleclick on the downloaded drivers) instead of Windows' update drivers schemes (if thats what you were using before).

I'd strongly recommend trying it in another, known to work with SATA drives, computer before declaring it faulty tho.