Help with SATA install

[Ninja4621]

Ive just purchased a new sata drive, its exactly the same as my current one. Once I had plugged it in, I turned on my PC and then when into My Computer and its not showing, just my current one. I right clicked on my current one and went into properties and I can see the new one.
1. How do I have it seperate from my c: drive
2. How do I know which is which, they are identical?

Please help anyone.

 

[eyeCpc]

First place to look is the Disk Management tool found in the "control panel>administrative tools>computer management>storage". Got all that now? Your new drive is still raw and not partitioned as a logical drive at this point and thereby not seen in any explorer window. The disk management tool is one way to see a new partition created while other drive tools like GParted seem to work even better.

 

[Ninja4621]

Cheers, im in that screen now! do i right click and intialize?

 

[Layzie Bone]

yes initalize the disk, then right click the partition and choose format, leave the allocation size to deafult, name the drive if you wish, and be sure that the checkbox is set to quick format, this is better if you have a large drive, [this is because larger drives like a 750 GB for instance run on the hot side, this will help keep from overheating the drive].

 

[eyeCpc]

yes initalize the disk, then right click the partition and choose format, leave the allocation size to deafult, name the drive if you wish, and be sure that the checkbox is set to quick format, this is better if you have a large drive, [this is because larger drives like a 750 GB for instance run on the hot side, this will help keep from overheating the drive].

Nosense! I used the full format oprion on a 500gb sata here as well as other drives. It takes a few minutes longer but works quite well.

Once the drive is formatted you can also right click on the rectangular block seen there again to choose a different drive letter if needed. Often you may want an E,F,G,H, or another letter assigned to avoid shifting those already used by your optical drives.

 

[Ninja4621]

thanks for your help guys. one other thing though, when i put my new hard drive in i noticed that i hadn't taken the jumper out of my current one, so it is only running at 1.5g/s rather than 3. If I was to remove this would it have any effectg on whats on my hard drive, i.e. lose all my data

cheers

 

[eyeCpc]

Sata drives don't come with jumpers for setting them as master or slave. The port you plug the cable into or spot on an addon controller card determine that. On the board itself you will see primary sata master/slave followed by secondary sata master/slave positions.

 

[Layzie Bone]

Nosense! I used the full format oprion on a 500gb sata here as well as other drives. It takes a few minutes longer but works quite well.

Once the drive is formatted you can also right click on the rectangular block seen there again to choose a different drive letter if needed. Often you may want an E,F,G,H, or another letter assigned to avoid shifting those already used by your optical drives.

I didn't say it wouldn't work, or anything of the such. Anytime the drive has a workload the drive will heat up. Heat is an enemy of a hard drive's platter, and eventually will cause the drive to fail. Doing a full format takes a whole lot longer. Both ways in the end work just as well.