New hard drive not seen

[scotman]

Hi all

I have just fitted a second internal hard disk to my PC. Everything appeared to go OK. I set the jumper for slave and everything plugged together fine.
On restart I looked for it and can't see it Win Explorer. It does show up in Device Manager and is reported as being operational. I tried to update the drivers but was told that no newer or better one was available.

What do I do now?

thanks for any help

[scotman]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sorry.

I am running XP home + SP3

[Old_Geezer]

Slave on the same IDE cable as your original ?

These days I usually set them to check the cable position they are on instead. Might be worth checking what both drives are jumpered to be.

That aside you can try Start, Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management. See if there is any clue there.


•Right-click on the device and choose Properties.


•Click on the Policies tab.


•Uncheck Enable write caching on disk.

[Old_Geezer]

I have no idea how that cr*p at the end of my post got there. We REALLY need a way to edit posts !!! Must have been from my copy into an editor for a spell check, and subsequent copy & paste back her >:-(

[scotman]

OG

Thanks for the reply. I have looked in Computer Management and the new drive is there.
The info boxes give the following data
Disk 1 (with a small red circle which has a horizontal white stripe across it)
Unknown
232.88 GB
Not Initialized

Next to that on the right in says
232.88 GB
Unallocated

How do I 'switch on' this drive?

[rojash]

Right-click on it (in disk management)
Can't remember the exact option that you want, but it should be self-evident (like format this drive, or use this drive)

[VHG]

Right click on the unallocated drive.

Then choose opetion "create partition" or "create simple volume" (cant remember edact words, and it does vary between versions of Windows.

Then choose "Format". Note if it is a large drive (1Tb) format can take hours so you may want to select "Quick Format".

[scotman]

Rojash

Thanks for reply

I have done as you suggest. Right click gives option of initialize disk so I selected that
Now I have
Disk 1 (red circle has gone)
Basic
232.88 GB
Online

The section on the right still says
232.88 GB
Unallocated

What should I do next?

[scotman]

VHG

Thanks. Right click in the section Gives option of 'New Partition' Is this what I need to do?

[rojash]

Yes.
Create a partition that fills the entire disk.

[scotman]

Rojash

Thanks for that. The drive is intended to store music files only and I am not intending to split it up into smaller partitions(it is 250GB). Should I create a Primary or Extended partition?

[rojash]

If you create a primary partition it will automatically take the next drive letter after any existing hard drives, which may change the drive letter of your optical drive. Create an extended partition and it should take the drive letter after all existing drives (including any optical drives). Either way it's not a big deal, as you can juggle the drive letters afterwards.

[scotman]

Rojash

All seems well now. I created a Primary drive as it didn't seem to make a lot of difference. Did a full format and everything is showing up where it should be.
Thanks for the help.

[Old_Geezer]

Great :-)