New HDD in Ultraslimbay in 600e 2645-4au not recognized...

[glance]

I have just installed a new 80gb hard drive (Western Digital WD800 Scorpio EIDE) into the HDD Adapter within the Ultraslimbay (with HDD Caddy). However, when I run Fdisk to partition the new drive, it is not recognized by the system.

I am running Windows 98SE and the BIOS is on INET36WW.

Do I need to make any physical adjustments to the hard drive?

Hopefully, someone will know what I may have missed here -- Thank you.

[MadeInJapan]

Make sure the HDD is enabled in Setup. Even then, sometimes the 2nd Hdd isn't recognized in the computer. I've had this happen before. Next step is to take out your internal Hdd, and slip the 2nd Hdd in the internal bay. After this, run fdisk, partition and format the drive. Then take it out from the internal bay and swap Hdd's again. Now you should be home free. Hope this helped.

[glance]

Thanks for the tip about slipping it into the internal bay. However, I am confused about your comment regarding enabling the HDD in Setup.

Within Win98SE, where do I find this Setup? When I installed an external USB drive, I did not have to go through any Setup steps prior to running Fdisk, so I am unfamilar with what you mean.

Thanks again for the help.

[GomJabbar]

He's talking about the BIOS setup. Press F1 at the beginning of the boot sequence to enter the BIOS setup. I recommend you write down any changes you make, in case you want to change them back later.

[whizkid]

It seems like you guys have never gone into the EZSetup on a 600 series. There is no way to enable or disable hard drives or controllers in there.

However, the ultraslim bay does have an IDE controller. You can enable or disable it with IBM's configuration utility (even the DOS version), but if the CD-ROM drive works in there, then the hard drive will too.

I suggest you try Hitachi's drive fitness tool to detect the drive. If that works, then the drive is seen. WD might also have such a tool. Also, I rather like Ranish Partition Manager for playing with partitions. It should detect your drive and allow you to partition it; it's free and fits on a floppy. W98SE's fdisk is pretty limited and gives an incomplete view of your partition table.

Are you given the option in fdisk to change which drive you are working with?

[GomJabbar]

It seems like you guys have never gone into the EZSetup on a 600 series. There is no way to enable or disable hard drives or controllers in there.

Well, I've been in EZSetup on my old 600E, but it's been awhile. That's why I only pointed glance to how to get in there. I remember some of the BIOS's features, but I'm a bit foggy on the others.

[MadeInJapan]

Yeah, me too...a bit foggy...guess I was thinking the same as T22, T23 and T30 which is what I've used recently. If you slip the HDD into the internal bay you shouldn't have to do anything....just boot up with a floppy and fdisk
Good luck.

[glance]

Thank you all for your help with this. I was able to get the HDD to be recognized. I am not sure if it was due to accessing the BIOS or the Thinkpad Config utility, as I did both.

Now I am having a problem with the partitioning and formatting of the drive. If this issue belongs in a different forum, just let me know.

Here is a summary of the issue:

The HDD is a Western Digital Scorpio 80gb, installed as a second drive in the Ultraslimbay adapter. I am running Windows 98SE and using FDISK.exe version 5/18/00 to perform the partitioning.

I partitioned this second drive using an extended DOS partition and then created 2 logical drives (D & E), 40gb each. After rebooting, I formatted both logical drives within Win98.

Both drives then appear to be working just fine, however when I reboot, a message comes up before Win98 is loaded stating: "Invalid Media Type reading Drive E - Abort, Retry, Fail?". Once Win98 has finished loading the E drive behaves as if it had not been formatted. When I click on it in Windows Explorer I get the message: "E:\ is not accessible - A device attached to the system is not functioning".

When I go into System Properties under the Performance tab it indicates: "Drive E is using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system". This is despite having formatted the logical drive using FAT32.

The logical drive D seems to be unaffected and working properly.

I would appreciate if anyone has any advice/guidance they can provide in helping to solve this for me. Thanks!

[GomJabbar]

Maybe someone else has better advice, but I would try reformatting the drive again, then run scandisk on it to verify that there are no bad sectors.