I posted this message on the hard drive message board, still waiting for a response, thought you might have an idea as to what caused my problem, since you were so knowlegable on my DVD and CD-RW, I thought I would ask you your thoughts.

 

I have a Dell 4100 Dimension using Windows ME.  I have been using two hard drives for the past 3 years, the master is a 40GB hard drive, and the slave is a 100GB hard drive.  They both have been operating flawlessly for the past 3 years, they are wired correctly.  Recently I had to reformat my computer and fdisk my master drive.  Before doing so, I disconnected my slave drive (I have done this in the past as a precautionary mesure to make sure what is on the hard drive is not lost), did the reformat on the master and put everything back together again.  Now the machine will not recognize my slave drive, nor does it show up in the Device Manager.  The cable are connected correctly, and the BIOS says "AUTO" [enabled].  The hard drive was partitioned and formatted.

 

Now here's the zinger.  I have a spare 20GB hard drive that I swapped with the 100GB hard drive, and it recognized it and operated flawlessly.  I put the 100GB back and the computer will not recognize it.  It does not show up anywhere, click on My Computer it's not there, click on Control Panel, Device Manager, it's not there.  I have a lot of information stored on this drive and do not wish to lose it.

 

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

 

Ted.