Solved Newly Installed Internal Hard Drive Not Visible

2

29tiz29

New Member
I just installed a new internal hard drive (SATA). I want to use this drive only for storage (not boot-up).

When I try to access it via "My Computer" the drive is not shown. When I try to find it in "Device Manager" it is not shown. When I try to set it up in the BIOS, that field is "read only"... I cannot highlight it to change it.

I have made sure all cables are secure. I even swapped the power source of my existing hard drive with the new hard drive to ensure power is OK.

How do I set up this hard drive?

My PC is a Dell Inspiron 531S, running Windows Vista Home Edition 32bit.

Ideas? Thanks.
 

My Computer

System One

Hello Tiz, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc), and double check to make sure that the new drive is "initialized" (online) (right click it's Disk # to do so) and formatted with a drive letter. (step two section here)

Hope this helps,
Shawn
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
    Manufacturer/Model
    Custom
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2, 4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2, 8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
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    Logitech wireless K800
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system, Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn, APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI, Galaxy S23 Plus phone
  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy Y0F94AV
    CPU
    i7-7500U @ 2.70 GHz
    Memory
    16 GB DDR4-2133
    Sound Card
    Conexant ISST Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    17.3" UHD IPS touch
    Screen Resolution
    3480 x 2160
    Hard Drives
    512 GB M.2 SSD
When i run disk management (diskmgmt.msc), I do not see the new hard drive listed.

I see my main hard drive (partitioned into C [OS] & D [recovery]).

I also see my CD-ROM [DVD].

The newly installed hard drive is not listed.
 

My Computer

System One

Ok. See if connecting the drive to a different SATA port on your motherboard will allow it to show up. If your motherboard has 2 different colored SATA ports, then use the same colored ones that you current drive is connected to.

Was the drive configured as a RAID drive before this?
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
    Manufacturer/Model
    Custom
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2, 4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2, 8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
    Keyboard
    Logitech wireless K800
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system, Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn, APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI, Galaxy S23 Plus phone
  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy Y0F94AV
    CPU
    i7-7500U @ 2.70 GHz
    Memory
    16 GB DDR4-2133
    Sound Card
    Conexant ISST Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    17.3" UHD IPS touch
    Screen Resolution
    3480 x 2160
    Hard Drives
    512 GB M.2 SSD
My motherboard has 4 SATA ports
SATA O is blue (main hard drive)
SATA 1 is black (DVD)
SATA 2 is beige (new hard drive)
SATA 3 is black (not used)

I tried swapping the new hard drive between SATA 2 & 3... no luck.

"Was the drive configured as a RAID drive before this?" not sure what you mean by this question. But, I would have to guess "no" because this is a brand new out-of-the-box hard drive.

Hitachi SATA Deskstar 1.0 TB
My C drive is a 232 GB

Hope this helps.
 

My Computer

System One

Ok, after looking around a bit, see if this may be the issue:

Go to BIOS
Select Advanced,
Select Seriel-ATA Configuration, hit enter
look on SATA Controller, I am sure it would be SATA-1 on your setting.
Change it to SATA-1+2
Save and Exit..
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
    Manufacturer/Model
    Custom
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2, 4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2, 8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
    Keyboard
    Logitech wireless K800
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system, Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn, APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI, Galaxy S23 Plus phone
  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy Y0F94AV
    CPU
    i7-7500U @ 2.70 GHz
    Memory
    16 GB DDR4-2133
    Sound Card
    Conexant ISST Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    17.3" UHD IPS touch
    Screen Resolution
    3480 x 2160
    Hard Drives
    512 GB M.2 SSD
Shawn-

Thanks, that did it.. I see my hard drive when I got into Device Manager. I guess my next step (after I get home from work) will be to initialize it, using your steps in an earlier post.

But, my question is this: Why partition a hard drive? Basically I am going to use this internal hard drive for storage (backup my music [multiple Ipods], and also store all my scanned family photos).

I also have two external hard drives... I was thinking of using them for backup of the new internal hard drive....one for music, the other for photos.

So why partition a hard drive?

Thanks.
 

My Computer

System One

Lot's of different reasons for partitioning ( Disk partitioning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )
Most times it's done for organization purposes - but there are some practical/performance reasons for it also.

Benefits

Purposes for partitioning:

  • Separation of the operating system files from user files.
  • Having an area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging.
  • Keeping frequently used programs and data near each other.
  • Having cache and log files separate from other files. These can change size dynamically and rapidly, potentially making a file system full.
  • Use of multi booting setups, which allow users to have more than one operating system on a single computer. For example, one could install Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or others on different partitions of the same hard disk and have a choice of booting into any operating system (supported by the hardware) at power-up.
  • Protecting or isolating files, to make it easier to recover a corrupted file system or operating system installation. If one partition is corrupted, none of the other file systems are affected, and the drive's data may still be salvageable. Having a separate partition for read-only data also reduces the chances of the file system on this partition becoming corrupted.
  • Raising overall computer performance on systems where smaller file systems are more efficient. For instance, large hard drives with only one NTFS file system typically have a very large sequentially-accessed Master File Table (MFT) and it generally takes more time to read this MFT than the smaller MFTs of smaller partitions.
  • "Short Stroking" aims to minimize performance-eating head repositioning delays by reducing the number of tracks used per hard drive.[1] The basic idea is that you make one partition approx. 20-25% of the total size of the drive. This partition is expected to: occupy the outer tracks of the hard drive, more than double the throughput, more than half the access time. If you limit capacity with short stroking, the minimum throughput stays much closer to the maximum.
For example a 1 TB disk might have an access time of 12 ms at 200 IOPS (at a limited queue depth) with an average throughput of 100 MB/s. When it is partitioned to 100 GB (and the rest left unallocated) you might end up with an access time of 6 ms at 300 IOPS (with a bigger queue depth) with an average throughput of 200 MB/s.
Click to expand...
 

My Computer

System One

29tiz29 said:
Shawn-

Thanks, that did it.. I see my hard drive when I got into Device Manager. I guess my next step (after I get home from work) will be to initialize it, using your steps in an earlier post.

But, my question is this: Why partition a hard drive? Basically I am going to use this internal hard drive for storage (backup my music [multiple Ipods], and also store all my scanned family photos).

I also have two external hard drives... I was thinking of using them for backup of the new internal hard drive....one for music, the other for photos.

So why partition a hard drive?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

That's great news Tiz. :)

You do not have to have multiple partitions on the hard drive if you do not want them, but you do usually need to initialize a blank new hard drive and format (create new simple volume) the drive so that it will be assigned a drive letter and allow files to be saved to it. That's all.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
    Manufacturer/Model
    Custom
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2, 4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2, 8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
    Keyboard
    Logitech wireless K800
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system, Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn, APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI, Galaxy S23 Plus phone
  • Operating System
    Windows 10 Pro
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy Y0F94AV
    CPU
    i7-7500U @ 2.70 GHz
    Memory
    16 GB DDR4-2133
    Sound Card
    Conexant ISST Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    17.3" UHD IPS touch
    Screen Resolution
    3480 x 2160
    Hard Drives
    512 GB M.2 SSD
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