Vista Sata Hd Help...

[causefx]

i have the Dell E520 with vista home premium, 4 gbs ram, 1. 320 gb sata hd, and i just put in my old drive from my other computer 250 gb sata hd. the BIOS reads the HD fine, and passes all the diag tests. but vista will not recognize the drive. It show the drive in device manager, it shows it as working properly as well. When i goto disk management, it shows my disk as dynamic and it i try to change it to basic it says it will format the hd. What should i do? i also have Serial ATA AHCI Bios Version ISRC 1.02.23, and my 2nd drive is WD2500JD.

 

[zep867]

If you're just using the disk as an add-on and dont need any of the data currently on the disk, go ahead and do the format.

It's just going to format the disk into a file structure that vista uses.

 

[causefx]

i cant format, because the hd has all of my backup from my old computer...

 

[zep867]

its a 250.... so Im assuming it has xp on it?

ntfs should be fine through vista, unless the file system is damaged.

 

[causefx]

actually its just a media drive with some backup on it, its got my old fles, plus all my pics, music, and stuff. it has no os on it.

 

[zep867]

Vista should detect that.

Beyond that, I'm not sure.

 

[CrazeD]

Vista must use a different file system than XP does, though it should still recognize NTFS.