Storage device wrong drive

[maf9016]

hooked up a external storage device .. everything was fine drive e dvd rw designation. rebooted with storage deviced hooked up . and reloaded some xp items .. then it switch desigations with my built in drive . so now the built in comes up as the dvd rw drive . even when i delete the software and remove the drive whenever it sees the built in drive it shows up as the external automatically ..


thanks

 

[mister g]

Not sure are you hooking up the drive with USB or eSATA? Please elaborate.

 

[maf9016]

the external drive is hooked up via usb

 

[mister g]

Can you boot into the BIOS menu and tell me what it thinks the hard drive is?

 

[maf9016]

well i was told to use del to boot to the bios but cant seem to have anything come up when i do that .. but i get to the utillity and it has unknow for primary 0 and 1 and cd rom for secondary 0

 

[mister g]

You don't need to use a utility, just press F2 when the Dell logo shows up and it should enter setup, then rotate over to the drives section. If your PC is a Dell they usually have a free 3.5 inch bay were you can install a second hard drive. The unknown is a problem can you go over to maintenance section and tell it to reset to factory settings?

 

[maf9016]

ok ill give it a shot.. i was having problems with the computer that is why i bought a external to get the files off before i tried to reload xp or reformat .. .. wanted to get the few important files i have on it off of it .. the rewrite that is in the machine never would write .. lucky to get it to get info off a disc ..
thanks i ll try to go to defaults
hey how do i use the ethernet to usb cable to get the info off if i cant fix the drive issue ?

 

[mister g]

I would say plug it in, otherwise I would hope your Dell is a model that came after Dimension because those come with a backup sytem restore partition.

 

[maf9016]

great thanks for your help ..

 

[maf9016]

Best answer selected by maf9016.