hard drive help please

S

seattle7champion

New Member
I am building my first computer and when i first went to put vista on none of my HD's where formatted so they didnt show up, only a C:/ drive with only 20gb of space, i have 3 hd's, 2 160's using ide and 1 250 using sata, they are all formatted and working properly now but the problem is vista loaded on the C:/ drive (which must be built in??) and it is getting full, like 19% space left, is there anyway to transfer vista to one of my other hd's without screwing anything up? i would just start all over but i have put so much on it already (6 movies, and multiple programs) it would be a huge pain in the a__, another thing is i cant get any dvd burning software to work with vista, with my mac i use roxio toast 8 and it is perfect, if anyone knows what i could use that would closely resemble toast 8 but for vista that would be awesome....thanks
 
First you are going to need a Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html and the usual reminder to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

Multiboot time surprise! You will find that many prorgams will need newer versions like the software for the tuner card here multibotting Vista with XP. The Vista boot loader automatically looks for the first ide drive when installing the new version. The way to it installed onto a different drive is to unplug the C drive and let it go to the next ide mainly the slaved ide drive. It should have spotted the sata drives as well during the initial installation. With XP you usually have to load drivers for sata drives from a floppy for the installer to see any satas installed.

Once you have a new install of Vista on the preferred drive the boot loader should be seen on the second ide. Then you can replug the primary ide. The other option would be to swap positions of the drives on the ide cable. Then you would have Vista on the new C drive and still have access to the files on the present ide master.
 
well the thing is the c:/ is not one of my HD's it is 21 gb of space that i dont know where it came from, the sata hd is e:/, and the 2 ide ones are g:/ and h:/

so my 3 hd's are accounted for, i just dont know where, what, or why this c:/ is on here, the system runs great but i dont know what is going to happen when the c:/ is full, thanks for the response any additional help would be very much appriciated
 
how can you not know where C:\ is coming from. Open the Run dialog, either by clicking start then run or pressing the windows logo key and R, then type in diskmgmt.msc, that will work for both Window XP as well as Vista. That way you can find out where from C:\ drive comes from.
 
well that is what i want to do, the thing is i am new to this and loading all the drivers for the motherboard was such a pain and i am still not sure if i got it all right, in the files on the mobo driver disc, it just has xp and lower, the disc would not autorun, and i cant find the drivers for vista anywhere on the ecs website
 
If you search your motherboard on google, I'm sure you will get a link to a website where they have all the drivers there for you to download. It shouldn't be too hard to track down drivers.
 
The actual make and model will go further since that is only the chipset information. One freeware that will specify "everything" inside your case is called SIW and is great system information tool to have onhand. This will indicate precisely what you have there. That's free at http://www.gtopala.com/

Knowing the make and model is a quick trip to the manufacturer's own support site for driver updates along with even one for the bios itself. Once Windows is installed and running it doesn't take any big effort to see the SMbus, onboard video and audio if used, and other drivers go on. The main concern when first setting a system up is seeing that the bios settings are the way they should be according to what hardwares(video card type, drives) you have installed. XP drivers are common place while some companies are still rather slow on updates for Vista. That's typical!
 
ok, sorry to be a pain, so i reinstalled windows vista so it has more room, now my sata 250 hard drive is not showing up?? anybody know why or how i can find it
 
Have you been inside the case at all since adding the drives in? Vista should readily see the drive unless the data cable or power plug somehow came out or the data cable went bad. If you see it listed in the Disk Management tool then the current partition isn't being recognised as a logical drive and seen in either MyComputer or an explorer window. The worst there would be a failed drive due to defect. But check the Disk Management tool.
 
If you don't see it during the post tests that points at one of two things there. The cable or the drive itself. A bad cable or simply unplugged is better to find then a defective drive that simply quit on you. The other thing to consider since Windows was reinstalled is to make sure all board drivers needed were also reinstalled there. Have the latest Vista updates on?
 
A good old bios setting? I was going to point at that being another thing to look at. But SIW can save the day often. That's a great tool to keep onhand and even download an extra copy for backup. That will also show your system temps to add to the list making it worhwhile.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top