Hard Drive not recognizable!

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by luma13, May 25, 2004.

  1. luma13

    luma13 Private E-2

    I am installing a Harddrive and some RAM into my computer no big deal right?

    I put in the ram and it works fine.

    I got the Harddrive from Dell, 80 Gig's, and I plug it in and it will not automatically recognize it.

    I am running WINXP Home and I went to add new hardware and it still wont recognize it. It then gave me a list of what is connected to the computer and it shows the harddrive in there as being connected, but will not show anywhere (e.g. My Computer)

    I then opened a command prompt window and typed

    D:\

    It said
    Disk Not ready.

    So I unhooked the main C:\ and then tried booting to see what would happen with the D:\ and it said not recognizable disk, which makes sense but it still should have something.

    What do I need to do to get this set up for this to work???

    Thanks

    ~LuMa
     
  2. G.T.

    G.T. R.I.P February 4, 2007. You will be missed.

    The drive must be partitioned and formatted before it's recognized & useable.

    In WinXP, go to Computer Management from Control panel, and you should see it there. Partition it into one or more partitions, however you want, and format each partition, with either FAT32 or NTFS. NTFS is preferable, although if your primary drive is set up as FAT32 you may want to stay with that; either one will work.
     
  3. luma13

    luma13 Private E-2

    Ok, cool I will give that a shot when I get home.

    Why would dell send a drive that is not partioned or anything to just a user, they would have no idea how to do that.

    ~LuMa
     
  4. G.T.

    G.T. R.I.P February 4, 2007. You will be missed.

    New drives are always supplied unpartitioned and unformatted, as the users have different preferences in how they want to set them up.

    A retail drive usually comes with instructions on how to set it up, plus usually a utilities floppy disk to aid in doing so if you need. Or at the very least, downloadable manuals and utilities from their website. Not sure what Dell sends out with theirs.
     
  5. Wyatt_Earp

    Wyatt_Earp MajorGeek

    The easiest way to format the drive will be to go into My Computer, right click on the drive, and select Format.

    The reason hard drives don't come formatted is because some people need different types of formats (FAT32 for Win95/98/2000/XP or NTFS for Win2000/XP), or some people want to break up their drive into multiple partitions.

    Whoops, a little slow on the post I see. :)
     
  6. G.T.

    G.T. R.I.P February 4, 2007. You will be missed.

    A totally unformatted disk won't show up in My Computer (it isn't showing up in his), so he'll have to get at it through Computer Management. It will be there.
     
  7. Wyatt_Earp

    Wyatt_Earp MajorGeek

    Ah must have missed that. Carry on. ;)
     
  8. luma13

    luma13 Private E-2

    Thank you guys for all the help it worked.


    ~LuMa
     

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