how to connect a 2nd HD to Dell Dimension 3100

K

Kalamazoo

New Member
I bought a 500GB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive 16MB 7200 RPM 3.5IN Caviar Blue hard drive from Dell and put it in my computer but I can not see it in disc management or in my computer.

How do I get my computer to recognize my new hard drive?

thanks

Kazoo
 
You won't see it under My Computer until it has been partitioned if it's a new drive, but it should show up under disk management. I've seen some computers that have extra SATA ports disabled by default, so you could try going into the BIOS to see if there is an option to enable them.
 
thanks I stumbled my way thru BIOS and now see the HD in disc management but

right clicking does not offer the format option (it did one time but seemed to do nothing - hopefully I did not mess it up by restarting etc.)

How can I get the format option back?

making some progress...

thank you so much

Kazoo
 
depending on the operating system win 7 for example, right click computer, manage, disk management.
the hard drive should be in there and might be labled unassigned.
all you have to do is right click and there is a format option. all you have to do is format the drive the way you want it, seems you want a NTFS, which is just you every day use and storage :)
hope this helped
 
thanks guys I stumbled thru it and am now copying files to the drive

the BIOS info was the main ticket.

Now I may try to put the OS (XP) on the new drive to speed things up.

btw I am new here and happy to get the help and way better than using Dell tech support (and paying for it).

thanks again

all the best

Kazoo
 
shrunkthatguy, thanks I think NTFS is the option I chose when I went thru the windows for formatting the drive - I did not change anything but used the default settings. It seems to work fine.

Kazoo
 
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