New hardrive prob

[Heebeegeetee]

Hi All,

Updating my PC, and am new to this sort of thing. I've installed a second hardrive, a 120gb job to use as storage. I can't get it to flag up under My Computer to format it. It shows up under device Management, but there are few options to proceed further from that point. If I right click My Compurter and go to Manage, Storage, then right click Disk Management, I click rescan disks. A meesage flashes up very quickly, too quickly to read actually. I think it says 'Disk Rescan in Progress, please wait...'

Anyway, nothing seems to be happening, so does anyone have any more ideas?

Plus, I've installed a dvd writer, and shall install an ethernet card, a multi-USB2 card and firewire card. I haven't changed the motherboard or processor. Will it be able to cope? (Sorry if this is a numpty question )

[tycho]

Does it show up under disk management?

If so, can you right click on the drive? What options do you get? You should be able to format it from there.

[Plotloss]

Disk Management

Format it and then initialise it (or possibly the other way around)

[Heebeegeetee]

Wow, thanks for the quick replies, guys,

It does show up under disk management, but when I right click the only options I get are Properties or Help. I can't see how to format or initialize...

[Scraggles]

Heebeegeetee said:

Hi All,

Updating my PC, and am new to this sort of thing. I've installed a second hardrive, a 120gb job to use as storage. I can't get it to flag up under My Computer to format it. It shows up under device Management, but there are few options to proceed further from that point. If I right click My Compurter and go to Manage, Storage, then right click Disk Management, I click rescan disks. A meesage flashes up very quickly, too quickly to read actually. I think it says 'Disk Rescan in Progress, please wait...'

Anyway, nothing seems to be happening, so does anyone have any more ideas?

Plus, I've installed a dvd writer, and shall install an ethernet card, a multi-USB2 card and firewire card. I haven't changed the motherboard or processor. Will it be able to cope? (Sorry if this is a numpty question )

Mobo might cope, not sure about the PSU, mine is currently:
2500 Barton Athlon CPU, 2 GB Crucial Ram
Arock K7VT4A Pro Mobo
120 GB boot 160 GB Data, 2x 160GB Data SATA's
NEC 4550 DVD Radeon 9800 Pro
PSU is around 500W or maybe a bit higher, the old 400W could not handle all the drives

last time I had a new drive, i simply plugged it in, might have used some disk management software like fdisk or partition magic or similair, it was a long time ago
Try right click my computer, properties, device manager. then right click the disk drives and scan for hardware changes
Taken off the enable disk caching as although it improves performance a stuck pc gets fixed by rebooting and it might explain the odd error

Hope this helps. Maybe search for a tech board that specialises in pc's like http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/

[Heebeegeetee]

Thanks guys, I've sorted it. In Disc management, I right clicked on the drive and then explored the Partition heading. I went for a primasry partition (I think it was) which creates a single partition of the empty space within the volume. This allows you to allocate a drive letter, and as soon as I did so it was recognised under My Computer and began formatting. So job done it seems, unless theres something I've missed or will soon become aware of .

Cheers Guys!