Hi everyone-after some help on how to sort a problem I've had since upgrading my OS from Win2K to XP Home.

My 'old' system spec was- Desktop config, Athlon XP2600+, ASrock K7VT4a+ MB Bios 3.31, A: FDD, C: Primary Master HDD Samsung SP2014n 200Gb, F: Secondary Slave HDD Seagate Barracuda ST380021a 80Gb, D: DVD optical, E: DVD writer. All on Win2K Pro SP4. The slave drive is (was) used to hold all my artwork before archiving and backups from the Master HDD.

After some deliberation, I finally decided to upgrade to XP which would allow me to use the latest Photoshop softwares, so I decided that I'd install as a seperate partition on the C: drive incase I had any concerns. No concerns with the install, but on checking after, I noticed that Windows had now called the XP partition G: and my slave HDD had gone! I went into Disk Management and it is shown as healthy, but all right-click options are greyed out and still no drive letter assigned. Device manager also shows it as ok & healthy, but again no right-click available. The partitions on G: were all present, but I cannot access the old Win2K partition!?! (no drive letters assigned & no right-click option.)

Bios set up is all auto detect, SMART disabled, Master HDD I/0, Slave HDD I/1 running on the same IDE cable to the MB. HDD Jumpers are set to Master & Slave respectively.

Short of re-formatting G: and re-installing Win2K (reverting to pre XP stage)so I can access the Slave (and then dump all onto my new external USB HDD)-then starting the XP process off again - i'm not sure what else I can try and will XP recognise a slave if and when I get to that stage again???

Help!!!