[Ham-Computers] RE: Added second hard drive, but.........

[Hsu, Aaron (NBC Universal)]

After you install a "new" drive, you need to initialize, partition, and format it.  In Windows 2K/XP:

 * Right-click on "My Computer" -> "Properties".  This will bring up the Computer Management console.

 * Under "Computer Management" -> "Storage", click on "Disk Management".

 * Windows will start the Disk Management console and might prompt you to initialize a new disk.  This will most likely be your new drive.  If it does prompt you, go ahead and initialize it (accept the default settings).

 * In the lower right pane, you'll find all the "logical" drives that Windows has found.  Find the new one using the drive size as a reference.  Right-click in the "unallocated" area on that drive and select "New Partition".

 * Go through the wizard to create the partition.  The partition type will be "Extended", and the size is the size of the drive (unless you want to divy it up into multiple drives).  When the partitioning is complete, the "unallocated" will change to "Free space".  At this point, you'll need to create "logical" partition(s) and "Format" the drive.

 * Right-click on the "Free space" and select "New logical drive".  Go through the wizard and create a logical drive using the max size of the drive.  Then assign a drive letter to it.  For the file system, select NTFS with the Default allocation size.  Change the volume name to whatever you want to name this partition.  Then check the "perform a quick format" box (unless you want Windows to do a partition verification (can take a while).

When done, the the Disk Manager should show the new drive letter and it's formatting progress.  After a few minutes (or hours, if you didn't check the "quick" format box), the drive will be ready for use.


If you're using DOS, you'll "FDISK" to partition the drive and then "FORMAT".  But, unless you have an updated version of FDISK, it probably won't recognize the full capacity of the drive.  Also, FDISK only supports FAT32, not NTFS.  This may not matter if you don't wish to use NTFS.


73,

  - Aaron, NN6O


-----Original Message-----
From: ham-computers-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:ham-computers-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Dave 'Doc' Corio
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 3:13 PM
To: ham-computers at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Ham-Computers] Added second hard drive, but.........

Just added a second SATA hard drive to my Gateway Core Duo PC and Win XP 
Pro, but I can't seem to find it. When I first booted up, I got the 
little message that reported that it had found new hardware (disk drive) 
But can't find it in My Computer or Explorer. In Control 
Panel/System/Hardware I can see it listed, and it shows working fine, 
but cannot find it in order to format it and use it. It also shows up in 
the BIOS no problem.

Only thing I can think of is that I plugged it into the SATA port on the 
motherboard immediately adjacent to the primary hard drive port. Could 
it be that I need to rrelocate that, or am I simply missing something 
painfully obvious? I rebooted a second time, but did not get the "new 
hardware" notification, and still can't see the drive.

Thanks in advance es 73
Dave
KB3MOW

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