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New SATA 2 hard drive is not being detected

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Johnny - Apr 11, 2009 at 08:46 PM
bmclark602
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 - Jul 6, 2013 at 02:59 AM
Hello,
I recently bought a 2nd hard drive for my computer. I'm decent at using computers and learning computer terminology bought i'm confused as to why my new hard drive doesn't seem to be detected by my machine and I need to know if this is incompaibility between the hardware or if the new hardware was DOA. I have the HP D4996t with an Asus IPIBL-TX motherboard. According to the HP website, this motherboard has:

Six SATA connectors:
o Supports 1 SATA-150 or SATA-300 disk drive on each SATA connector
o Speed up to 1.5 Gb/sec or 3.0 Gb/sec, complying with SATA 1.0 and SATA 2.0 specifications

NOTE: The faster rate of 3.0 Gb/sec requires that both the hard drive and the motherboard support it. If one or the other does not support 3.0 Gb/sec, the PC negotiates down to the slower 1.5 Gb/sec.

Now my first primary hard drive is a Western digital hard drive which i'm assuming is a SATA 1 drive. The name on the drive is WD3200YS-01PGB0. I believe it is supposed to have 320GB of space. This is where I currently have windows vista ultimate installed.

The new hard drive is a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive I bought from newegg .com. Now I'm assuming that it should be compatible with my computer as the hp site says that my computer can support both SATA 1 & 2. So when I received my package and plugged in my new hard drive I was disappointed to find that it wasn't being detected by windows vista. I went to Disk Management to see if there was any sign of new hardware being detected but the only thing displayed was my main c: drive. When I would select the option to rescan disks, it would result with no new hardware being deteced. The same thing occurs when I do this from the device manager. All the connections have been double checked and I seem to have everything set up as accurately as possible. But the issue still persists and I have no idea how to fix it.

2 replies

Answer 1 / 2
goggie
Apr 13, 2010 at 07:37 AM
The problem may be you're not looking in just the right spot . Click Start, RIGHT-click My Computer in the window, then click on Manage from the menu. In the new Computer Management window expand "Storage" if necessary and click on Disk Management. I expect OP (damaster) and joses both have got this far. Now, examine the TWO right-hand panes. The upper one shows you only the devices Windows already knows how to use. The lower one, which SCROLLS, also shows you other devices Windows does not yet understand. Your new disk should be here with no letter name and no info. RIGHT-click on it and, from the menu, choose to Partition the drive. You'll have a choice of how big it should be and most likely want to use all the drive in one volume. (You can use only part of the space. If you do, when you are finished come back here and find the remainder shown as "Unallocated Space". You can create a second Partition or more in it if you want.) For this first Partition, make it the Primary or Active Partition, and NOT bootable because this drive is for data only - you already have a boot drive. When all the choices are made, go ahead with the Partition operation.

When that is done, come back to this new Partition and RIGHT-click again and choose to Format it. Choose the NTFS File System option. A Quick Format will do the job in 5 to 15 minutes. A Full Format will do a Quick Format, then go though every sector of the drive and test it, marking off any faulty ones (very rare) so they won't be used. Full Format takes many hours!

When you are done, reboot and your newly prepared hard drive should show up in My Computer as an empty unit ready for use.
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steer
Apr 18, 2010 at 08:33 PM
Thank you very much!!!! Had the same problem and this fixed it!!!
0
mhoppe
Apr 20, 2010 at 12:20 PM
goggie has the right answer. my hp pavilion dv7 2170us laptop running windows 7 would not allow it to see the drive because of conflict both drives had the same info. I just wanted to upgrade to a 500gb 7200rpm and install the 500gb 5200rpm as a backup.
Thanks
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nootropic
Apr 28, 2010 at 02:36 AM
Hi,

I am having the exact same problem with the same drive as the guy who started this thread. I have checked Disk Management and this drive does not show in the lower portion. SATA is enabled in my BIOS. The only time this second drive will appear is when I unhook the main drive. Any ideas? Im running Vista on P6T Deluxe x58 Intel Core i7 920.

Thanks in advance.
0
nootropic
Apr 28, 2010 at 08:52 PM
nvm I figured it out.
0
JM
Jun 27, 2010 at 07:17 PM
This was great! Thanks for the step by step instructions.
0
Answer 2 / 2
xpcman
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Apr 12, 2009 at 01:27 PM
I would boot into the BIOS and see if the drive is detected and to see if the SATA ports are enabled.
I would also check the cables (both power and data) and use other SATA ports. You could even use the existing hard drive connections to test the new drive in the BIOS.

Your existing drive (WD3200YS-01PGB0) is a 3.0Gb/sec drive so your new drive should be compatible.

Good Luck
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