I installed a new Western Digital 120GB SATA hard drive on an Intel motherboard. All is well. Then I installed another WD 80GB SATA hard drive. BIOS recognizes both hard drives. All is still well, except Windows does not recognize the second hard drive. Ideas?

Check to make sure its formated .

Thanks cperjack. Problem is, since Windows doesn't recognize the second drive, I can't access it to perform the format.

What I would do is get a win98 bootdisk from [http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm then follow the instruction HEREon Fdisk and formating ,you can format it fat32 ,then if windows reconises it you can then use the xp cd to format it again in NTFS if that is the file system you want to use ,!

MeThinks

Thanks again caperjack. I have a win98 bootdisk and am familar with Fdisk. How does this sound? I remove my 120GB hard drive, do a clean install on the 80GB formatting in NTFS. After formatting, reinstall the 120 and the 80 and see if Windows recognizes both drives.

Try the Data Lifeguard Tools from WD

My apologies fer cuttin' in Jack

Thanks to both of you. Appreciate your suggestions.

No apologies necessary ,That what it all about !Helping others ,And I lean to ,I've never used lifeguard tools

you can get software from the manufacteur of your HDD or try the smart boot software that comes with your mobo

Thanks for all suggestions. I solved my problem by simply disconnecting my "primary" SATA drive from the motherboard, then started what would normally be a clean install of XP to the "slave" SATA drive. As soon as XP formatted the drive and started installing XP, I interrupted the install, reconnected my 120GB drive, rebooted and windows recognized both drives. There may be a more sophisticated way, but I got the results I wanted in a few minutes.