BIOS/Setup sees second SATA drive but Win does not

[jrfalkner]

I have a Dell Optiplex GX280 with 3GB RAM running XpPro SP3. The OEM drive is a Seagate Barracuda 40GB SATA drive [C:\] on SATA1 that is now full. The machine is on a network that's been patched together over the years by various techs and I'm reluctant to completely replace the drive. The plan was to install a second Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA drive on SATA2, clone C: to the new drive, swap the ports and format the old 40GB for storage. SNAG > Bios and Setup "see" the 1TB drive and all settings/parameters appear to be correct but the drive does not appear in Windows in ANY location, menu, etc. I've tried several work arounds without success. Setup does not have a fast boot switch I can turn off for a longer look at hardware during the boot process. One tech says the motherboard is not communicating with it - embedded driver issue? Any suggestions?

 

[Pinhedd]

I have a Dell Optiplex GX280 with 3GB RAM running XpPro SP3. The OEM drive is a Seagate Barracuda 40GB SATA drive [C:\] on SATA1 that is now full. The machine is on a network that's been patched together over the years by various techs and I'm reluctant to completely replace the drive. The plan was to install a second Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA drive on SATA2, clone C: to the new drive, swap the ports and format the old 40GB for storage. SNAG > Bios and Setup "see" the 1TB drive and all settings/parameters appear to be correct but the drive does not appear in Windows in ANY location, menu, etc. I've tried several work arounds without success. Setup does not have a fast boot switch I can turn off for a longer look at hardware during the boot process. One tech says the motherboard is not communicating with it - embedded driver issue? Any suggestions?

If the drive is new it will not be initialized and will not have any partitions on it. The drive will not show up in My Computer until a volume has been created with a Windows readable filesystem and an assigned drive path. This can be done through Disk Management

 

[CompGee]

Go into Disk Management and right-click on the disk and select Initialize. Right-click again and select New Partition. Make the new partition and it should appear in My Computer if you formatted the partition.

 

[jrfalkner]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. However, because it's WinXp and the motherboard was not communicating with the drive POST startup, it turns out that it was necessary to format the drive OUTSIDE of Windows. This was accomplished using a Seagate utility called "Sea Wizard." Once downloaded and installed on the desktop, one of its internal utilities creates a BOOTABLE disk with the Seagate utilities on it, running under a Unix platform. I then used the new bootable CD to start the show and from there, it was a simple 3-4 click process to format/clone the new/old drive. All's right with the world. Thanks again.