Hard drive not recognized

[JonathanS]

I just added a second hard drive to my 3 year old HP Pavilion with Windows XP Home. I followed the directions in the original manual for adding a hard drive. The jumper is set on cable select as specified. (I also tried it on slave). The hard drive shows up in the device manager as operating properly. It also shows up in the BIOS as installed hardware. The problem is it does not show up in My Computer or Explore. I can't access it to format and begin using it. Any ideas?

 

[ShoobieRat]

Yeah, it's trying to use a drive letter that another drive is already using.

Go to START->Run and type "diskmgmt.msc"

This opens the disk manager for windows. You should see a standard listing of your drives, and below a series of blocks representing the drives and partitions. Your new drive should show up here. If so, go to its "block" and right click on it. Select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" from the menu. Now change the drive letter to something not in use. Hit okay, and exit out. Your drive should show up now in MyComputer and Explorer. If it doesn't, you might have to reboot. If it still doesn't, let us know and we can hash a new route.

 

[MasterJason]

Normally I just use right click My Computer>Manage>Disk Management>And click the top one Normally create new Logical drive (or something like that) , follow the steps ,it will format it then you are ready to go. While doing those steps it will ask you for a drive letter to assign to it