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Storage HELP - Installing a second SATA hard drive

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Dazbo666, 2 Feb 2009.

  1. Dazbo666

    Dazbo666 What's a Dremel?

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    Apologies in advance if I'm asking a newbie question, but I've been away from the PC upgrade scene for a while - I've recently been upgrading my PC, and currently have a SATA drive as my master C: and an external drive as a backup.

    I've recently bought a second internal SATA drive and tried installing it last night...
    The PC recognised the new hardware, apparently installed it successfully, and the device manager shows that the new drive has been recognised - but when I click on "My Computer", it's still only got my original C: visible ??

    I remember in the distant days of IDE drives, that you had to get the jumper setting correct for the PC to properly recognise your drives... but I'm not aware of any jumper pins on SATA drives, so I'm assuming it's a matter of changing a setting from within windows??

    (For the record I'm running Vista Home Premium, a GeForce 7050M motherboard, and AMD dual core 5200 CPU)
     
  2. Montyburns

    Montyburns What's a Dremel?

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    You'll probably just have to format/mount the drive, and the easiest way to do that in windows is probably through the disk management tool...

    Head to computer management (right click a 'My/Computer' icon, hit manage) then go to disk management, which is under the 'Storage' tab, at least on my Vista machine anyway. Or just type 'diskmgmt.msc' in a run box...

    From there you should be able to see your new drive, and right click on it to format it. Once that's done, it'll be visible in explorer.
     
    pimonserry likes this.
  3. Dazbo666

    Dazbo666 What's a Dremel?

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    Many thanks for the swift response. i'll give it a go later today ;)
     
  4. mm vr

    mm vr The cheesecake is a lie

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    Yep, do what Montyburns said. If it still doesn't show up, assign it a drive letter in Disk Management.
     
  5. kenco_uk

    kenco_uk I unsuccessfully then tried again

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    Or just right-click>initialise it from disk management, then do a quick format. Takes far less time.
     
  6. Dazbo666

    Dazbo666 What's a Dremel?

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    After everyones valuable advice yesterday, i managed to initialise and format the new hard drive... so now I have plenty of space for all my fave films, game demos and MP3's :)
     
  7. pimonserry

    pimonserry sounds like a party.

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    :thumb:

    +1 for Bit-Tech!
     
  8. kenco_uk

    kenco_uk I unsuccessfully then tried again

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    Don't forget the pron :)
     
  9. Dazbo666

    Dazbo666 What's a Dremel?

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    Oh, that stays in a small number of hidden folders :thumb:
     

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