windows not detecting new hard drive
- Thread starter fej180
- Start date
EIDE OR SERIAL ATA? No one ever bothers to include the type of drive they add or remove and have problems with!
If the drive is a serial ata model you probably will need to download and install the needed drivers in order to have Windows properly detect it. The first thing to do at this time is to right click on the MyComputer icon(quicker to get there) and choose the "manage" option. This will bring you directly into the "Administrative Tools>Computer Management" section of the control panel. When you see the "storage" item in the right window there double click on that to see all drives detected.
The drive will need to be partitioned and formatted for Windows to properly detect it and display that as another drive in the explorer window. Windows can't show a bare drive. The XP installer on the other hand can also be used to partition the drive without installing XP at that time. The disk management listing is then right clicked on where you choose the format option as well as being able to assign a specific drive letter of choice or accept the next one in line. E with cd drive as D and so forth. If an ide drive slaved to primary that would be D pushing the cd drive to E. There you would assign F, G, or H until you reassigned the cd drive back to D.
If the drive is a serial ata model you probably will need to download and install the needed drivers in order to have Windows properly detect it. The first thing to do at this time is to right click on the MyComputer icon(quicker to get there) and choose the "manage" option. This will bring you directly into the "Administrative Tools>Computer Management" section of the control panel. When you see the "storage" item in the right window there double click on that to see all drives detected.
The drive will need to be partitioned and formatted for Windows to properly detect it and display that as another drive in the explorer window. Windows can't show a bare drive. The XP installer on the other hand can also be used to partition the drive without installing XP at that time. The disk management listing is then right clicked on where you choose the format option as well as being able to assign a specific drive letter of choice or accept the next one in line. E with cd drive as D and so forth. If an ide drive slaved to primary that would be D pushing the cd drive to E. There you would assign F, G, or H until you reassigned the cd drive back to D.
I went to the computer management area and here is a link to what I saw, since I dont really know what it means.
It seems like it sees my new hard drive...being the disc 0 the 372 gb but it still isnt detected in my computer. I dont know what I might have to do from this screen, but I dont want to mess anything up.
PC EYE, It is an SATA sorry I didnt include that. I wasnt sure of the information you might have needed. I will search fr the driver online, and try that out. I dont know how to format it or partition it. Thanks for the help
Jeff
It seems like it sees my new hard drive...being the disc 0 the 372 gb but it still isnt detected in my computer. I dont know what I might have to do from this screen, but I dont want to mess anything up.
PC EYE, It is an SATA sorry I didnt include that. I wasnt sure of the information you might have needed. I will search fr the driver online, and try that out. I dont know how to format it or partition it. Thanks for the help
Jeff
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144423
heres a link to the hard drive i bought
heres a link to the hard drive i bought
Look at the one with Disk #0 on it. Apparently Disk #0 is "unallocated" meaning Windows does see a working drive with nothing on it! Notice the "healthy NTFS" oartition seen on Disk #1. It clearly shows "C:" as the designated drive. You now have to partition and format the drive in order to be first be able to access a new health and formatted partition on it followed by being able to copy and store files on it. Or maybe subsequently install a second operating system there.
You first have to create the one or more intended partitions on the drive. You could even choose to install an OS on a primary partition on the front of that drive and have a second partition for simply storing things. Apparently you were able to create a single primary and see that formatted. Very good! for your first try there. 
One the two ide drives on the system here the primary runs XP Home with the Pro version on the 2nd HD currently replacing a Linux distro. A second partition is used for backing up the primary. Note that you can only create four primary partitions on a drive. With the ide controller at default you would first have to configure the sata as the primary in the system bios if ever going to install an OS there. This is due to the ide controller overriding sata by default. But these are things you may or may not ever get into for general use with a single OS.
One the two ide drives on the system here the primary runs XP Home with the Pro version on the 2nd HD currently replacing a Linux distro. A second partition is used for backing up the primary. Note that you can only create four primary partitions on a drive. With the ide controller at default you would first have to configure the sata as the primary in the system bios if ever going to install an OS there. This is due to the ide controller overriding sata by default. But these are things you may or may not ever get into for general use with a single OS.
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