hard drive woes

[vivid_vibe]

Hello,

I just installed a new Western Digital SE 120 gig hard drive. It doesn't show up under windows explorer, though. This is my first time adding an extra hard drive, so there could be something obvious I'm missing. The drive is recognized under device manager and reports that it is working properly. Any idea what I could've did wrong?

vivid

 

[dreamliner77]

You need to format the drive. Use the utility from the manufacturer or the disk management util under administrative tools in XPPro

 

[cpugeniusmv]

more specifically:

Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management...

you should see the new drive. and it will probably pop up with a dialog/wizard that asks you to activate/partition the drive...

follow that, and you'll be set

 

[vivid_vibe]

Thanks alot guys, that did the trick. I'm just curious though, what is the difference between partition and simple layouts? Also what is the difference between basic and dynamic types? Just some extra info: my primary hard drive is FAT32 and the new one I formatted as NTFS. Will there be problems because of this? Will I benefit by converting my primary hard drive to NTFS, and is there danger of data loss involved? Thanks alot.

vivid

 

[LeeJend]

NTFS is a more robust file system than FAT 32. You can mix them without problems. Windows, 95,98, ME can not use NTFS

You can convert a FAT 32 to NTFS at any time BUT make sure the drive is thoroughly defragmented first! Any time you touch a HD there is danger of data being lost.

Here is what I do:
-Defrag the original disk first.
-Install the new as secondary.
-Boot from the HD utility floppy.
-Make an image of the original disk onto the new HD using the utility disk.
-Make a new Partition on the new HD using the rest of it's space.
-Shutdown, disconnect the original HD, remove the slave jumper on the new HD.
-Reboot. You should be looking at everything you had before operating normally off just your new HD and a new data logical drive D: that you can use for data or program file installs.
-Wait 4-6 weeks to make sure the new HD has no infant mortalities.
-Now you can keep the original HD as a backup and update it every few weeks and swap it if you get a virus, failure, etc. Or you can install it as the slave, boot from floppy again and format it as a new NTFS blank.

DO NOT try and boot with 2 HD that are set up as Primary System disks. Windows gets real finicky about that.

 

[vivid_vibe]

Thanks LeeJend, I will do just that.

vivid