installing 2nd HDD probs.

S

Synthetic

New Member
Well I installed it fine and all. But here is the problem, the computer recognizes (in BIOS) that I have a 2nd hard drive. But in Windows (In My Computer) it only says I have 1 still.

BTW -- when I first booted up the new hardware wizard recognized that I have a 2nd drive, but then Windows crashed. :confused: Any ideas?

Synth
 
possibly a bad IDE cable, also, could be a bad HDD, , check for anything lose on the drive, like the IDE and Molex Connectors
 
Nah the IDE is fine, because thats the same one connecting my boot drive, and would the BIOS recognize the drive if the molex was not in?
 
No, the BIOS would not see the drive if it isn't powered. Check the IDE cable, anyway, make sure it is well-seated in the drives and board.

Ensure you have your drives set Master (for original) and Slave (for the new one).

Win won't recognize the new drive in Explorer until it is formatted. To do that, go into your system properties, hardware management (assuming you have Win XP) and right-click to new drive and you should be able to partition and format from there.
 
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Check the whole length of the ATA cable, I spent half a day trying to figure out what was wrong wtih my hard drive, but when I was cutting a cable tie in my case, i cut the ATA cable too.
 
Nah the drive is not partitioned yet or formatted or anything yet.. I am going to go try what Dngrson said.

EDIT: How exactly can I partition the drive? Remember I cannot see it in 'My Computer'
 
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UPDATE: All connections are nice and tight, and I still cannot see in My computer. I guess it's a bad drive? Or I am completely wrong in how I think you format a drive (i.e. you dont go thru My Computer)
 
make a MS-DOS Boot disk on a floppy disk (right click your floppy disk drive and hit format, then select "Creat MS-DOS Boot disk") and boot from it, type Fdisk and follow the directionsm just be sure to format the right HDD
 
Check the whole length of the ATA cable, I spent half a day trying to figure out what was wrong wtih my hard drive, but when I was cutting a cable tie in my case, i cut the ATA cable too.
Click to expand...
Haha done that myself

Check the whole length of the ATA cable, I spent half a day trying to figure out what was wrong wtih my hard drive, but when I was cutting a cable tie in my case, i cut the ATA cable too.
Click to expand...
Also make sure the IDE cable is properly connected to the mobo (ie. long segment between mobo and 1st device)

If for some reason, that FDISK doesnt work, use this
 
Thnx Prae, BUT, (lol)... When I try to run that program It gives me an error and tells me to close it!

EDIT: Read on some website that for fdisk command to work the floppy must have fdisk.exe on it, I assume the MS-Dos boot disk was supposed to contain that, but I guess it does not, do you think I could download fdisk.exe and then put it on my MS-Dos disk?
 
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Assuming you're using Windows XP, you don't need to worry about FDISKing. Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Disk Management (under storage). If the drive appears here (and it should) you can create a partition here.
 
OK ceewi I did that, it says disk 0 (then all the stuff for my main hard drive)

Then disk 1 (unallocated, uninitialized) If i right click it, one of the options is to initialize it, I am sure that's what I should do, but I am not going to until I get a thumbs up lol.
 
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