Dual Boot, 2nd Vista installation can't see 1st hard drive

Inspiron 1720, 4GB RAM, Originally 120GB & 250GB hard disks.

This unit came with Vista 32 bit Home Premium which is installed on the 1st hard drive (120gb). I added the 250GB as a second hard drive (gotta love multiple hard disks on a laptop!) installed Vista 64 bit Ultimate on it to have dual boot between the 32 bit & 64 bit environments. Both work A-OK except for one glitch: the 64 bit Ulitmate that's installed on the 2nd drive does not 'see' the 120GB drive.

As expected, the 2nd Vista installation assigned itself the C: drive. However, there is no trace of the 120GB drive anywhere, not in device manager, not in refreshing the device list, not in showing hidden devices....nowhere. When booting back into the 32 bit version, the second hard drive is alive and well as drive "D:". So obviously the 2nd hard disk works A-OK.

A couple months ago, took that 120GB drive and cloned it with a 320GB drive using Acronis. So now it has a 320GB and the same 250GB second disk. This utility worked like a champ to move from a smaller drive to a larger one! It's noticeably quicker, too! So the first time I booted into Vista 64 (again, on the 250GB drive), it actually noticed that the other drive (the new 320GB) was actually there! Woohoo! The O.S. notified me that it had installed drivers for the new device and that I needed to reboot. So I did.

Booted back into Vista 64, the 1st drive then re-disappeared like it has. I thought the problem was solved somehow, but it's still there in all it's glory.

I'm perplexed as I cannot put my finger on the issue.

Any clues?

TIA,
Mike

 

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management - How many partitions and drives can you see ??

 

Thank you for your fast response!

Attached is the screen shot from when the 120GB disk on drive 1 was installed. It's much the same now, except that the partition sizes are larger of course. Also is the screen shot from the 2nd hard disk/Vista 64 bit installation as a comparison.

Seems like it just doesn't see it at all.

 

anyone have any ideas?

 

bumping just one more time

 

Ultimately, you are going to have to rename one of your Vista installations to a different drive letter. The Vista x64 seems to assume it is C:\ so when you are in it, it does not see the other C:\ which is Vista 32 bit.

 

That won't do him any good. C is just a letter used inside windows to identify a volume. I have three installs of vista on one machine, when I switch between them, they all register the system boot volume as C. His second hard drive is simply not recognized by windows when he is booted into his x64 install. The proof is the disk manager shot, there is only one physical disk listed. If it was a drive lettering problem, the second drive would at least be listed, the volumes simply wouldn't have letters assigned to them.

@OP, are you using bitlocker or some other security on the x86 install that would prevent the disk from even being seen by the x64 install? Can you take the disk that isn't recognized by the x64 install and plug it into another computer? Does it get recognized by the other computer? What are you using for your boot manager?

 

Make sure the Intel Matrix drivers are installed. I believe the Microsoft drivers have issues.

 

No bitlocker or anything like that installed. I took the drives out, they were seen a-ok by another system. Just using Vista as the boot manger.

I copied the bcd database to the second drive then swapped their positions in the chassis. It didn't boot (no surprise, forgot to set the new 'boot' drive as Acdtive. So I put them back in their proper order. Lo & behold, Vista 64 saw the 1st drive! Woohoo! Unfortunately, after the first reboot, it no longer saw it anymore...same symptom again.

I was wondering that perhaps is an internal GUID problem within the 64 bit OS? Dunno for sure, just theorizing.