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by john fleming on February 15th, 2004

john fleming

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FDISK doesn't recognize my slave drive. What could be wrong?

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  • by DOSJockey382 on May 4th, 2004

    DOSJockey382

    Make sure that your slave drive is properly recognized by the BIOS. FDISK in Windows and DOS will not recognize a disk drive that is not BIOS configured. When your computer boots, it should give you a listing of all disk drives that it detects. Check these boot displays to see if the slave drive is recognized. Drives in the master position can be autoconfigured during boot-up on some systems without going into the BIOS. Drives in the slave position cannot do this. You must go into the BIOS to make sure the drive is configured properly, either through an autodetect routine or configuring the drive by hand.

    If the BIOS will not recognize the drive either, you will need to check the jumper configuration on your slave drive. The jumpers to configure your drive are usually between the power connector and the data cable. The two most likely configurations for your drive are Cable Select (CS) and Slave (SLV). Adjust the jumper positions to one of these two. If your drive is already configured to one of these settings, try the other. If the drive is configured to neither setting, try Slave first and then Cable Select second. Once you have reconfigured your drive, go back into the BIOS and see if the drive can now be detected. Once the drive is recognized by the BIOS, FDISK should have no problem recognizing the drive either.

    There is also one very unlikely scenario. Your hard drive may not be compatible with your hard drive controller. It is extremely rare, but I have encountered it before. I experienced this incompatilbility between Fujitsu hard disks with some SiS disk controllers.

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