CodeMinion
Member
i have another 250 gig hard drive that is not being reconized... it shows up in Bios but not in Vista. how do i fix this.. apparently Bios shows both hard drives as master
Vista only reconizing 1 hard drive
- Thread starter CodeMinion
- Start date
If you are running two ide drives with the jumper set wrong on the slave that will see problems with proper detection in Windows. You could also be seeing the Secondary master if the second was set as master on a second ide channel. For sata you will see a master and slave port for the primary and secondary channels as well.
When adding a drive to an existing installation you sometime look under storage devices in the device manager there to right click and choose the uninstall option to see a fresh detection by Windows with the new hardware found popup seen later. But this only works if you have already partitioned and formatted the drive to see a logical drive letter designated to it.
First look in the Disk Management tool under "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>COmputer Management>Storage" to see if the drive is listed along with the first, the one or more optical, and even floppy dirves seen there. If seen tight click on that one alone and use the create new primary option and later repeat that to use the formart option to see a drive letter assigned.
When adding a drive to an existing installation you sometime look under storage devices in the device manager there to right click and choose the uninstall option to see a fresh detection by Windows with the new hardware found popup seen later. But this only works if you have already partitioned and formatted the drive to see a logical drive letter designated to it.
First look in the Disk Management tool under "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>COmputer Management>Storage" to see if the drive is listed along with the first, the one or more optical, and even floppy dirves seen there. If seen tight click on that one alone and use the create new primary option and later repeat that to use the formart option to see a drive letter assigned.
CodeMinion
Member
im running 2 SATA drives ... 1 is channel 0 master and the other channel 1 master .. and i know its partitioned because back when i was installing vista the HD read at 237 gigs when its a 250 gig hd .. just hav to figure out how to set it.. ill try what u suggested tho.. thanks 
That's about right for a 250gb model since the 250gb idle drive used for Vista here at the moment sees 238.4gb roughly after the initial partitioning.
What you are still seeing there is primary and secondary masters since you plugged the second drive into the Secondary master port rather then the Primary slave port. But you know the drives are being seen which is generally a good sign.
The next step is to see if you remembered to plug the power in on the second drive. The bios is seeing it through the data cable for simply being present while not operational if not powering up at all.
The Sata II plug will be a wider thinner plug coming from the supply over the standard molex type for optical and ide seeing 4 heavy pins inside it. It will see a slot with a row of small contacts on each side inside the slot and simply pushes into the rear of the drive next to the 7pin data cable there.
What you are still seeing there is primary and secondary masters since you plugged the second drive into the Secondary master port rather then the Primary slave port. But you know the drives are being seen which is generally a good sign.
The next step is to see if you remembered to plug the power in on the second drive. The bios is seeing it through the data cable for simply being present while not operational if not powering up at all.
The Sata II plug will be a wider thinner plug coming from the supply over the standard molex type for optical and ide seeing 4 heavy pins inside it. It will see a slot with a row of small contacts on each side inside the slot and simply pushes into the rear of the drive next to the 7pin data cable there.
CodeMinion
Member
that worked
thanks ... now i see both Hard Drives in vista... just needed to assign a drive letter and format the driveIt doesn't take much! 
Don't feel too bad about it however. When needing a reinstall of XP here on a sata drive I simply forgot to "unplug" rather then plug in the ide drive Vista is currently on. When reaching the desktop the deignated drive for XP was D not C! 
awwww crap!
Unplug the Vista drive, reinstall XP again, and later boot up with the Vista disk to use the automatic repair startup problems tool there to see Vista then start normally again simply due the Windows installer always looking for the ide drive first! while Windows was seen on the first sata. ide overrides sata there every time!
Don't feel too bad about it however. When needing a reinstall of XP here on a sata drive I simply forgot to "unplug" rather then plug in the ide drive Vista is currently on. When reaching the desktop the deignated drive for XP was D not C! awwww crap!Unplug the Vista drive, reinstall XP again, and later boot up with the Vista disk to use the automatic repair startup problems tool there to see Vista then start normally again simply due the Windows installer always looking for the ide drive first! while Windows was seen on the first sata. ide overrides sata there every time!