2nd Hard drive

C

capt_eddie

New Member
Hey my second hard drive crashed so I bought a new one and plugged it all in, but now I cant see it in "My Computer" but I can in Hardware Management. any ideas how to get it to work? thanks
 
With any new drive you first have to partition and format it in order to be seen as a logical drive with a drive letter assigned to it by Windows. If you simply plug in a drive it will remain invisible until then. If you have a cd writer you can download a free 35mb Linux partitioning tool called GParted live for cd and burn the iso image to a cd-r. That will create the one or more partitions you want on the drive. For Windows you want the NTFS type when selecting the type of partition. Afterwards you simply use the Disk Management tool to format the new partition to make it available for use.
 
The 0.3.3.0 version seen at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 is the last "platform independent" version they came out with.

For a free version for creating a bootable cd BurnOn works great for this. You can download that from http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/ Scroll down to find the small download now link seen there. Other burning programs will simply create data disks and not burn the iso image onto a bootable cd-r even with some supporting that type of file format.

Once you boot the system with the disk you burn there's a few things to know first about it. It has a series of prompts where you simply keep pressing the enter key until you reach the main gui where your current C drive is first seen as HDa1. The default 1024x768 screen resolution and 24bit settings are what to use since that's Linux not MS there.

Just drop the list on the right end of the menu bar to see the HDb item and click on that. You are then ready to get familiar with the options. For a look at some screen shots go to http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
 
hey its for windows, i just talked to a computer store and they told me to right click my computer and go to manage then go to the hard drive and i can format it there. its working, thanks for your help
 
INTELCRAZY said:
Make sure it is in Device Manager and use Computer Management, what was PC eye trying to do?
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Your catching on! Around around the bush we go where we stop only PCeye knows! What he said will work if you do it right, but its a total waste of time when you can just use your Disk Management
 
INTELCRAZY said:
Make sure it is in Device Manager and use Computer Management, what was PC eye trying to do? He usually gives very good advice, maybe he misunderstood and thought you were using Linux.
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While the Disk Management tool in XP can be easy GParted is still a far more effective tool to have onhand. GParted won't leave unallocated drive space at the back end of the drive like the Disk Management or XP installer will quite often. When partitioning and formatting multiple drives that fact became quite evident despite Strangehold's muttering. :rolleyes: Plus the Disk Management is unable to resize partitions later if you decide to split either drive for multi OSing there.
 
PC eye said:
While the Disk Management tool in XP can be easy GParted is still a far more effective tool to have onhand. GParted won't leave unallocated drive space at the back end of the drive like the Disk Management or XP installer will quite often. When partitioning and formatting multiple drives that fact became quite evident despite Strangehold's muttering. :rolleyes: Plus the Disk Management is unable to resize partitions later if you decide to split either drive for multi OSing there.
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Okay then, I think I might use that when I dually Vista & Ubuntu on my next drive.
 
PC eye said:
While the Disk Management tool in XP can be easy GParted is still a far more effective tool to have onhand. GParted won't leave unallocated drive space at the back end of the drive like the Disk Management or XP installer will quite often. When partitioning and formatting multiple drives that fact became quite evident despite Strangehold's muttering. :rolleyes: Plus the Disk Management is unable to resize partitions later if you decide to split either drive for multi OSing there.
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Its really at the front of the drive and its anywhere between 7 and 8mbs and its for changing your drive to Dynamic. And nobody is changing the size of partitions. Plus its not that user friendly if you have never used it- just like the poster chould not get it and had to use Disk Management
 
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StrangleHold said:
Its really at the front of the drive and its anywhere between 7 and 8mbs and its for changing your drive to Dynamic. And nobody is changing the size of partitions. Plus its not that user friendly if you have never used it- just like the poster chould not get it and had to use Disk Management
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I just answered one problem on creating a partition in 1mb of unallocated drive space seen at both ends of the drive in the Disk Management tool for someone on another thread. The same applies here. Despite the small space reserved at the beginning of the drive the unused space at the back of a drive is an apparent flaw MS found out and fixed for Vista.

You are now able to resize partitions there probably stretching the existing primary into the small portion the XP installer misses. Once you have actually used GParted once or twice it becomes all too easy and more effective. The Linux tool there has a far hardware detection structure and works! You just can't wonder off while it is loading or you are forced to reboot it again when you try to change from the default settings. That's for an advanced Linux user there. The main gui is easy to use.
 
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