No Drive Letter for New Hard Drive

I just installed a new Western Digital 120 GB hard drive as a second hard drive in a Dell 4550. The BIOS shows that the boot hard drive is PRIMARY 0 and the new hard drive is PRIMARY 1. The computer boots properly and works fine. The device manager interface shows that the new drive is working properly and has no problems. However, in MY COMPUTER the drive does not exist. The drive has no drive letter, and I cannot access it. I uninstalled the drive through the device manager and reinstalled it with the same result. Through the device manager interface, I asked that the Internet be searched for a better driver and was informed that the driver being used was the latest driver. I did notice that the jumper on the new drive is in the same position as the drive that came with the computer (It's a Western Digital 40 GB). I don't know if I need to move the jumper, and if I do, I don't know where to move it. The drive was shipped to me without a shred of documentation. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

Thanks
Norjon

 

The drive (if brand-spankin' new) is probably not formatted. Right click My Computer and click Manage. Double-Click on Storage, and then double-click on Disk Management. You'll be presented with a list of the drives (including CD/DVD's) attached to the PC. Scroll thru the list until you see the new hard drive listed. Right-click on the bold print where it says Disk 1 and choose Initialize. Follow any prompts 'til that's done. Then move the pointer over to the white space and right-click and choose format, follow the prompts again (I choose Quick Format 'cuz I'm impatient, Full Format can take alot of time, over an hour in some cases), and be sure you use NTFS (NTFS is the default setting if I remember correctly). After it's done formatting, close everything and open My Computer: your new hard drive should be listed and accessible!

hopperdave2000

 

Thanks Hopperdave. You sent me to the right place. I had already initialized the drive. However, I found I needed to enter the Partition Wizard in order to set a drive letter and format the drive. I didn't have to do that when I previously connected an external drive.

 

Glad I could help!
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