Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 10

I'm running vista 32 and have just instaled a second 500gb SATA HDD. This is recognised in both bios and device manager but not in my computer! What can i do to make the drive accesable as a secondary HDD?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is the drive formatted?

I have a 40GB hard drive in my computer right now. I have a 80GB hard drive from another computer that I want to put in.
Can I delete EVERYTHING from the 80GB hard drive and then put it into my other computer and will it still work? Or Should I leave all the files and the Windows it has and put it in?

I ask because I want to have as much memory as possible and because the 80GB drive has files and programs that I dont want on my other computer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, there's no reason not to wipe the 80GB disk clean. You can do that by formatting it before or after you install it in the other computer.

hello. i have connected the sata hard drive to ide mother board through sata adapter but it is not working.

Hi, I have questions about how to install a harddrive from my old computer to my current computer. also, can we extend our power cable, because its kinda short to conect one drive to another?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, you can extend a power connector. You'll need to buy a cable like this: http://www.directron.com/cbl-y.html

Hey, I have a C2D system. I don't remember the motherboard but it supports both IDE and SATA. My problem is that I already have a 250GB SATA HD and am now adding on a 40GB IDE, but the system is not picking it up. Can you guide me through a few trouble shooting steps. Do I have to make any changes in BIOS and/or place the jumpers in any correct order? Thank you

EDITOR'S NOTE: You should set the jumpers on the IDE to Master. SATA has no master/slave protocol.

Hey Andy you seem to have not formatted the hard drive so it is not showing up in windows explorer/Computer.

To do this open computer management followed by disk managment .Find your hard drive , create partition according to your requirement then format it to ntfs. Then it will show up in computer.

Hi, I have an HP machine running XP Pro. I have an external HDD enclosure with USB connection with a new 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAJB PATA (IDE)HDD inside.

Under Device Manager I can see the drive, but not under my computer/explorer. When I right click it from the list, look at properties and click "Volumes" then "Populate" it says the drive is not Initialized? What do I have to do to make the HDD work, and asign it a drive letter? Thanks heaps, and hope you can help! :-)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Has the drive been formatted? Sounds like you need to do so.

It is recommended that you format you harddrive if you transfering from one of to another. If you can't find it in my computer but in bios, right click in my computer and go to device manager. It should come up with install hardware and from there you can format it and access it. Hope it helped anyone.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yikes! Formatting will erase ALL data... proceed with caution.

Yeah I just install a 1 TB WD data hdd and it works great but my computer shows only 990 gb. help... Also if you want to format a new hdd and not lose the data. Connect it to another comp and back it up to discs or somthing, then install the new drive and format and transfer the data. Of you haven't got two pcs then ask a trend, just don't break anyting...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The missing 10 gigs could be in a separate partition, or it could be that after formatting, only 990 GB is actually available for use. Don't sweat the 1% difference, drives are super cheap now.

My problem is, when i install my dvd rom together with my IDE hard drive, my dvd icon won't appear in windows and it also doesn't work. But my cd rom works well with my IDE drive. And my SATA hard drive also works well with both dvd and cd rom. What is the problem with my pc? It seems, something wrong happens if i use my IDE drive and dvd rom. Thanks

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you connecting them serially? Make sure the jumpers are set correctly, since both are IDE.