Problems adding second hard drive

Zascar

I just bought a second hard drive (30gb maxtor 7200) for my dell dimension 4550 but I cannot get it to work. I have had a second hard drive in the system before working fine, but this one will not work at all. Initially when I put it in and booted i saw a little icon in the system tray saying "New Hard Drive Found" and it seemed to be installing, but did not come up in "My Computer". I have played with the settings in the bios, and the jumper settings - there are two different positions for setting it to a slave, and I also tried taking the jumper clip off all together, but nothing works. In the bios is shows 2 hard drives, but it will not show up in 'my computer'...

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks.

SouperComputer

im guessing your using 2k or xp (could be a mile out here), im also guessing all is well on the hardware and detection side!

if so the prob may be that it has to be mounted.

go to administrative tools, computer management, disk manager

you should see a bar menu of the various volumes on your PC on the right hand side, including your new maxtor.

right click on the bar for the new drive and assign a drive letter for it there.

Pimp Ninja

OK Its being detected in the bios, that means that it is installed correctly.

However the fact that it is not shoing up in my computer, means that the partitions have probably not been defined.

The "little icon in the system tray saying new hardware found" implies windows XP.

If you go into Administrative Tools -> Computer Managment -> Storage -> Disk Managment

You should be able to see the new drive there.

Use this to create a new partition, format, maybe reboot not sure. And your new HDD should be up and running.

[added]
Damn you SC gettin in before meh...

Zascar

Perfect, thanks lads...

One more questsion: FAT32 or NTFS - Does it really matter? I formatted with fat32, cause I'm going to put the drive in an external hard driove enclosure, so I can use it on other machines, so if they are 98/ME etc they will be able to read it... Are there any drawbacks to this?


Thanks again,
Zascar

woolymammoth

if it's gonna be used with Win 98 or Win ME, then you'll have to
have it on FAT 32. there's no real drawbacks to this, NTFS offers
better security. FAT 32 will do perfectly.

FAT32 vs NTFS

SouperComputer

fat32 is best for you so. NTFS can be a bit nippier, and is handy if you have an OS on the partition. But im assuming you are just transering vids, mp3s or projects with the drive

Damn you SC gettin in before meh...

:ninja:

phaxx

Moved to tech. When you post to a board you're not familiar with, you read the charter at the top. It's sticked, and says "read this before posting to this forum" - so do it.