Windows not recognising new harddrive

Hootie · 31-08-2007 12:47pm #1

I need a little help as I would not be the best at all this stuff. Basically I installed a new internal 500G harddrive. I set the jumper to slave and connected the cables. The problem is that I cannot get windows to recognise the new drive in "My Computer". It sees the new drive in bios and when I go into computer management it is there under "Device Manager" and "Disk Drives" as WDC W5000AAKB 00UKA0 but it does not see it in disk management under storage only the C drive is shown here. I don't want to mess around too much in all this incase I do something I shouldn't. Any help would be appreciated.

Kimbot · 31-08-2007 12:50pm

Do you have D, E, F drives assigned??
If so I presume they are cd/dvd drives??
Maybe your master is set to CS, that could cause a problem recognising your new drive?? What is the main HDD?

Hootie · 31-08-2007 12:56pm

I have D and E drives assigned to cd rom and cd r/w. I have no idea what the main hdd is set too as I didn't touch the jumpers on this. The main drive is an old IBM DTLA 30G.

Anti · 31-08-2007 1:06pm

And the bios see's it no problems at all?

Hootie · 31-08-2007 1:10pm

Yep I can go into the bios and its there.

p2kone · 31-08-2007 1:15pm

you say
1. bios can see the hard disk
2. it's listed under device manager

if the above two are true, then all you have to do is use "Computer Management->disk management" to format and assigh a drive letter to the drive

firstly right click "disk management" and select "rescan disk" you should then be able to in the bottom right section of "disk management" see a drive not formatted or without a drive letter. Right click on that and follow the wizards

Hootie · 31-08-2007 1:39pm

There is a disk 1 128GB unallocated. When I right click on that it asks to convert to dynamic disk? When I click on properties its WDC W5000AAKB 00UKA0 but its only showing 128GB, I cannot see anything about format or drive letters

Anti · 31-08-2007 2:35pm

How old is your pc? As you are probably running into 48bit lba.

Hootie · 31-08-2007 2:40pm

This ole thing is about 5/6 yrs old, its a hp vectra with pentium 3 with xp, but I really only use it for internet and music.

p2kone · 31-08-2007 2:42pm

don't convert to dynamic disk. i think it's you current c: drive you are seeing

it seems strange that you are only seeing 128GB, is that the size of you current c: drive by any chance?

in the bottom right of "disk management" can you see a

disk 0 - this should be you c: drive

disk 1 - this should be you new 500gb disk

you should see two disk objects in "disk management", the first one should be disk0.

i would right click disk 1 (second object) and convert to basic disk, then format it as a single ntfs volume.

are you logged on with administrator privileges?

Hootie · 31-08-2007 3:00pm

And there was much rejoicing

, the drive is finally formatting. It is however formatting as 128GB so when it is finished I will open up desktop and ensure Komplett didn't send me the wrong size drive. But it is formatting and now I know the procedure. Fair play to one and all for helping me and apologies for all the hassle but I am slowly getting better at all this stuff.

Anti · 31-08-2007 5:31pm

Hootie wrote:

And there was much rejoicing , the drive is finally formatting. It is however formatting as 128GB so when it is finished I will open up desktop and ensure Komplett didn't send me the wrong size drive. But it is formatting and now I know the procedure. Fair play to one and all for helping me and apologies for all the hassle but I am slowly getting better at all this stuff.

As i said before, this is a 48bit lba problem. Look here. This will fix your problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305098

Ginger · 31-08-2007 5:57pm

He did mention it was XP.. probably the BIOS or the controller not picking it up size wize correctly. I thought it was 137GB that was the limit rather than 128

Anti · 31-08-2007 6:47pm

Ginger wrote:

He did mention it was XP.. probably the BIOS or the controller not picking it up size wize correctly. I thought it was 137GB that was the limit rather than 128

Its 48bit lba, trust me....

Hootie · 31-08-2007 8:44pm

I was looking thru google and it seems that this is common prob with xp something about partitions, other people were only getting 128Gb aswell. I will have a look at the procedure that Anti posted tomorrow. Will this give me the full 500GB?

Ginger · 01-09-2007 6:39pm

Anti wrote:

Its 48bit lba, trust me....

I know its the 48LBA.. but!

I had an older mobo and it didnt pick up anything beyond 137GB due to a limitation of the disk controller untill I put in a new IDE controller and that picked up the new hard disk at the correct size.

The board itself didnt support LBA 48 rather than the OS as XP supports it natively as of SP1

And the 48LBA issue in XP is under this KB http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Windows not recognising new harddrive

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