Add a Second Hard Drive - Comments Page 7

Simon Ellis' post on June 30, 2007 did it for me. I had the same problem as many here - the hard drive was recognized but it didn't show up in Explorer. BTW, I have Windows XP. I suggest putting this info into the top section or highlighting it somehow.

Second HDD: NTFS or FAT32? I finally managed to connect a second 250GB SATA disk to my computer. It already has a 80GB NTFS drive with XP Pro. The question is should I format the new HDD for FAT32 or NTFS. Which is faster and provides better data protection ? If XP crashes on my first disk, would I loose the second disk NTFS partition, in case I use NTFS? If FAT32, how do I format a 250 GB HDD FAT32?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think FAT32 is used very much any more. NTFS is supposed to be faster and more reliable. And I can't see how a problem with one NTFS partition would affect another one.

An answer to Eldad question about Windows not recognizing a second hard drive when BIOS does. DAVID answered to click Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Mgmt, Storage, to arrive at DISK MANAGEMENT (where all drives displayed and not displayed are listed). Then click on the mystery drive, click Initialize then change drive letter to format the disk. ELDAD could not find how to initialize.... I FOUND THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO EREASE, INITIALIZE OR FORMAT TO HAVE WINDOWS XP RECOGNIZE THE DRIVE!!!! After clicking through the list of menus listed above to arrive at the DISK MANAGEMENT window, my computer listed my second hard drive as a "Foreign drive". I right clicked then I had three options: One option was make drive standard disk or something. When I clicked on that, it said "This will erase contents of disk". I DIDN'T WANT THAT, SO I WENT BACK TO DISK MANAGEMENT and clicked on "Add Foreign Disk", then I clicked "Ok" and the drive is now recognized by Windows XP intact and not ereased!!!!! I don't know if this is the same or will work on Win 2000, ME or 98 though.

Never mind. I got the Hard Drive to work again. I still cant get the 2nd Hard drive to work. When I connect it, It now says:
Pri Slave HDD Error
The Hard Drive makes weird noises when booting up and can't be recognized. I know this Hard Drive Used to work because I had it working on my Compaq Computer. Has my Hard Drive just gone bad?

Hi! I have similar issue as michael (his comment is from 14th of july) but I could not find the solution here.

I have a PC with two old (are they called IDE?) HDDs and one SATA2. It was working fine until I tried to change the old slave to an other one. I did not succeed so put the original HDD back. After that I "lost" my SATA2 hdd. BIOS and disk manager can see it but I can not access it. There is no drive letter. It tells me that the HDD is dynamic and has got no connection. Right clicking gives the option to re-activate it but there is no use clicking it. Is there any way to have it back without reformatting? I have a lot of files that I would like to keep...

Thank You in advance

Hi! I am using vista business and have a 120 Gig HDD I ran out of room so I purchased a 250 Gig HDD. the BIOS sees it and everything but the computer will not what do I need to do. Do I need to add Vista to second HDD or just leave it as is.

Excellent site. More close-up photos on setting the pins for the slave and master would be useful. After reading the comments, I am still not brave enough to try and install my second HD.

Hi...I am using a AMD setup, running a windows Xp orpeating system. I am having some major issues installing my hard drive. The issue is that I have already installed an Operating system on a IDE Hard Drive, and am trying to add a SATA Hard Drive as a secondary Drive. However when I add the SATA drive my computer no longer recognises the IDE. Can you shed any light on this? Many Thanks. Jason

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you go into Bios/Setup, do you see the drive listed there?

Hi, I successfully managed to add a new internal hard drive to my computer. I used a WESTERN DIGITAL 160GB. Using their software, I partitioned it into 4 parts. Everything is ok except that the existing CD ROM & DVD R/RW rom have totally disappeared from the system. How do I get them back.
Tony.

EDITOR'S NOTE: See http://askbobrankin.com/cdrom_icon_missing.html

i bought a PNY pci SATA 2 channel raid card pnp, so i could install a second hard drive in my new presario vista machine. i thought the hard drive i was installing was bad so i returned it. My pc recognizes the raid card fine and has recognized and assigned a drive letter for it once (the old hd with data on it), then i rebooted, then poof! it was no where to be found.

I have taken the pc apart changed the card into another slot and put the sata cable in port 2 then back to port 1 in device manager it sees the raid CARD BUT NO HARD DRIVE. THIS IS VERY FRUSTRTANTG..

THE NEW HARD DRIVE HAS NOT BEEN FORMATED OR PARTITIONED. i will eventually format it and install another op system on it such as xp later when i get it working. It is weird that the pc found the hd once and now it wont.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Does it still work with just the old HD? Or does the problem happen when both the old drive and the new SATA drive are plugged into the RAID?