Installing a Second NON RAID Sata HDD??

[Shaundale]

Hi,
Just got a new 1Tb Sata Hard drive to replace the second 250Gb Sata that was in the PC. I have just swaped them about ( was 2 Sata 250Gb Now 1 250Gb and the 1Tb). I changed the boot priority in BIOS so it booted from the main 250Gb Drive. BIOS saw the Tb drive. When I Started PC for the first time Win XP said that it had found the Tb hard drive BUT, when I go to Explorer or My Computer I cannot see the drive.

I think I used to use a programe like Drive Partition, I don't have this now. Any thoughts on how to get windows to see the drive??

Thanks,
Shaun.

 

[KSoD]

You need to format the drive for XP to use it. Hard Drives come in RAW format which can not be used by Windows.

Start>Right click on My Computer>Manage

In that window select Disk Management. There right click on the drive (It should be listed) and select format. After you format it will then show up in My computer.

 

[Shaundale]

Mak,
Thank you so much. Great learning something new

BUT, I have done as you explained and found this in the help file:

"To initialize new disks
Open Computer Management (Local).
In the console tree, click Disk Management.
Where?

Computer Management (Local)
Storage
Disk Management

Right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk.
In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select the disk(s) to initialize.
The disk is initialized as a basic disk.

Notes

To open Computer Management, click Start, and then click Control Panel. Click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.
You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings might also prevent you from completing this procedure.
New disks appear as Not Initialized. Before you can use a disk, you must first initialize it. If you start Disk Management after adding a disk, the Initialize Disk Wizard appears so you can initialize the disk."

Click on Help and index, then search for "initialize new disks" Now, After I Right clicked on the Disk 1 BOX and selected initialize disk EVERYTHING seemed to stop. I haven't a clue if anythings happening so done CTRL+ALT+DEL to get task manager and when I clicked on Processess the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) wasn't using any CPU and VERY little memory.

I would imagine that it would take some time to Initialize a 1Tb HDD but to see nothing I'm a bit worried. I Take it that to close the computer down now would NOT be a good Idea? If I try and Right Click on Disk 1 Box it only comes up with Properties???

Please tell me that it takes HOURS to complete. Then Go to bed and see whats happened in morning. Don't want to leave on if it should be showing CPU/Mem usage in Task Manager.

Sorry it's so long, Thanks again,
Shaun.

Sorry,
After Clicking Initialize new disk I have now Right Clicked on the Bar and told it to Partition the disk. Had the options of Primary partition or Logical Drive. Then what letter to asign and if I wanted to Format, What file system to use(NTFS) waht size the cluster to be ETC, ETC, After only a couple of seconds the Drive was formated and ready to USE

Thankyou so much for the HELP!!!! MAK.

Shaun.

 

[veedubfreak]

Primary partition, and give it whatever drive letter you want it to be. Yes it will take a good while to format.

 

[KSoD]

Glad you got it working. It does take a minute or so to get a size of that drive initialized. Sorry i didnt mention that before.