installing new Hard Drive problems

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Hi guys, this ain't ww so I guess it belongs to this forum.

My computer crashed and I want to install a second hard drive SATA, well... the problem is that I can't make it to be detected. It is a Seagate 500Gb, and my OS is Windows XP home edition.

Any help will be appreciated because what I've found on the doesn't help me much due to my ignorance of course. It is a brand new disk and funny enough the BIOS doesn't see it.

Thanks to any PC guru that may help me.
 
Funny you should mention it but I had the same exact issue yesterday. I had to install a new video card, and in order to do that had to unplug a bunch of cables and plug them back in. I've got two hard drives and after I got it all put back together, one of them was failing to show up.

Basically, I had to go through a couple of tries of plugging and unplugging the data and power cable to the drive to make sure they were properly connected. Eventually it started showing up again and all is well...
 
Hi Toni,

Most likely, the drive needs to be partitioned and formatted. I haven't really worked with XP home to know what it's limitations are in comparison to XP Pro. These are instructions for XP Pro. XP Pro will see hard drives which the BIOS doesn't interpret properly.

1) Open Control Panel
2) Open Administrative tools
3) Open Computer Management
4) Select Disk Management
4a) You should see three drives here (Disk 0, Disk 1, and CD-ROM 0)
4b) Disk 0 should be your boot drive and be labeled C:
5) Right-click on Disk 1 and select create partition.
5a) Select partition type(primary), partition size, and choose file format type.
5b) Click next. Review settings.
5c) Click finish.

Unless you selected quick format, this will take some time. When complete, it should show the drive as a healthy state in Disk Management and the drive will be available to use.

Hope this helps.
 
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Check the Dip Switches on the end, need to configure as a master (or slave) Should be a diagram (sticker beside the switches) showing which switches to where. If main HD then the configure is for master. If that's not the problem :dunno:

Check your plugs etc. Change power plug with other componants...
 
Check the Dip Switches on the end, need to configure as a master (or slave) Should be a diagram (sticker beside the switches) showing which switches to where. If main HD then the configure is for master. If that's not the problem :dunno:

Check your plugs etc. Change power plug with other componants...

I think SATA drives are self-configuring, except as overridden in BIOS.

...which brings up BIOS. Toni, you may need to go into your BIOS setup (first thing when you turn the power on, BEFORE the Windows flag flies) and tell the BIOS to support the second hard drive. You may need to change the boot order in there, too, if you want to make the new drive bootable.
 
I think SATA drives are self-configuring, except as overridden in BIOS.

...which brings up BIOS. Toni, you may need to go into your BIOS setup (first thing when you turn the power on, BEFORE the Windows flag flies) and tell the BIOS to support the second hard drive. You may need to change the boot order in there, too, if you want to make the new drive bootable.

Yep, no master/slave settings for SATA drives. With the exception of some esoteric applications, it's one drive per cable per connector on the motherboard/SATA controller. The different BIOS's handle SATA differently with settings such as ATA emulation, compatibility mode, enhanced mode, etc and the same settings can have varying results depending on the electrical layout of the circuitry. This is typically a variation from brand to brand though.

In my experience, Disk Manager is the first place to look with systems supporting SATA drives as Windows doesn't auto configure new hard drives. If Disk Manager doesn't see the drive, then look at the BIOS. Performing a crosscheck of temporarily connecting the second hard drive to the Disk 0 SATA port on the motherboard would be a good way to verify the BIOS will see a 500GB hard drive.

As a side note, you will need Service Pack 1 or greater in order for XP to recognize the full capacity of the drive. It will see it as 128GB if a SP isn't installed though.
 
What Matt said. (great instructions, by the way). The only difference I had with the last SATA I put in was that it said "initialize" rather than "partition", but once you're at that screen, it's hard to go wrong... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
Matt, Bill, Tim, thankyou for the input. I've done some of the steps you mention, I'll make the others that you suggest and see what I can achieve.

thanks a lot
 
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Thanks for the correction Bill. :thumb: Going from memory isn't always the best. :huh:

You're welcome Toni. All these years in the computer industry come in handy once in a while. :D Feel free to PM or even use yahoo messenger (warfieldm) if you need a quick response.
 
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