Installing a new hard drive

[Him]

I feel like a moron comming here to ask this questionn, seeing I do know what I'm doing with computers. But I cant figure it out, and I know that this forum is the best place to come. Here it goes.

I just procured a new Maxtor 120 GB 7200 RPM drive for my computer. I have an AMD Athalon 2400XP+ 2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, GeForce mx440 64 MB Video card. Nothing too big, nothing fancy. It is running Windows 2000 Professional. I have the drive plugged in, set as a slave. The BIOS reads it as a slave and every other spec it is supposed to see, even Windows sees the drive, somewhat. The device manager reads it, but I cant seems to access it. Nowhere can I find an entry into this 120 GB hard drive that is seemingly working properly on my computer.

 

[ekÆsine]

press (windows key+r) or startbutton> run. type in diskmgmt.msc into the run box. you must create a basic primary partition or logical drive from empty space called "unallocated space". format this newly created partition with NTFS or fat32, assign a drive letter to it, and you can use it. it's easier than it sounds, a wizard will guide you.

http://www.evozero.gamma.timdorr.com/computer-guides/basic_disks.htm

 

[Shrapnill]

Not that familiar with 2000. Does win2000 have disk management?? If so, just run what ekÆsine told you then right click the disk and select format and itll open a small window asking the specs you want. Youll want NTFS for a HDD that size. Its pretty simple if win2000 has the same DM that XP does. Let us know if that works. If not you can always FDISK it.

 

[Him]

Nah, Fdisk didnt feel like working. But, yes, disk management worked flawlessly. It did everything it was suppose to, and now I am up and running. Thank you. One thing, however, that I cannot figure out is the drive letters. Hard drives are always suppose to come before any disk drives, right? (exempt is, of course, the trusty old floppy) I got my C: drive, my CD-RW which is D:, my DVD which is E:, and my enw harddrive which is F:. Isnt my new harddrive suppose to be D: and everything else pushed up a letter?It's not like I'm freaking out or anything, just curious as hell because I always though that was the way to do things.

 

[hilowe]

I think that the hard drives had to be set that way with Windows 95 and 98 (maybe even Me), but 2000 doesn't care.

 

[ekÆsine]

this is also easy to fix. go back to disk management and right click the cd-rom and disk. select "change drive letters"

Hard drives are always suppose to come before any disk drives, right? (exempt is, of course, the trusty old floppy) I got my C: drive, my CD-RW which is D:, my DVD which is E:, and my enw harddrive which is F:. Isnt my new harddrive suppose to be D: and everything else pushed up a letter?