Hard drive not reading in my new build?

[taylorswift]

Ok so long story short, I've been using my SSD drive since my motherboard and hard drive didn't come with enough SATA cables. So today I finally got my SATA 3 cable for my Western Digital 500gb HDD and I plugged it in to both my mother board and HDD. I started up my computer and now when I go to MY COMPUTER it only shows my SSD and not HDD. Is this because there is no data on it yet or because it's not reading it at all? Please help me My 250GB SSD I only want to use for bootup and video games.


- Brittany

 

[tomatthe]

Follow this, http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265764-32-guide-installed-disk-system

If you get through this and you still can't see the drive repost.

Most likely you just need to format the drive, and assign it a drive letter.

 

[taylorswift]

ok so I'm following that guide,was going ok until I reached this part -

" Right-click anywhere in the big block or Unallocated Space that represents your drive. Choose the action New Partition (or New Simple Volume in Windows 7). You want to create a Primary partition (or Simple Volume) that takes up the full amount of available space. If you are going through the Partition Wizard, at this point you will also choose to format the partition as NTFS, with the Default "Allocation Unit Size" and a Label like "New Big Disk." Choose Quick Format if that choice is offered. "

My disk says Unallocated like it's supposed to I guess. But when I try to do the right click thing, I see the simple volume option however it's not clickable and I don't know why.


Edit: I think I did it!!!!! I will report back here soon. Now when I install a game or save a picture will it always ask which hard drive to put it on or will it automatically save to my primary hard drive? Because right now I've been using my SSD for everything but now I want to save all pictures and downloads besides games onto the HDD and not SSD. How do I do this?

 

[tomatthe]

Installing a program generally will ask for which drive you want to put it on if you go with the advanced or custom option. Saving pictures and similar files will not, you will need to manually sort these as you want to.

You may want to google or search these forums for setting up an ssd with a hd as secondary storage. You can do several things to make this split a bit easier, personally I would just manage it yourself though.

 

[taylorswift]

yea I just want to make it so that pictures,programs,etc,are put onto my HDD and not SSD. Only things I want on my SSD is my bootup and video games. But I don't know how to go about doing that. Maybe in the BIOS? I don't want to mess anything up so I will wait for some help from someone knowledgeable.

 

[inzone]

All programs that are either downloaded or loaded by cd will have the C drive as the default destination drive. However most of the install program wll let you change the destiation and the destiation drive. What your best option to do is to go to the secondary hard drive and create a main folder called program files and then from that folder every time you want to install something right click on that program file folder and create a new sub folder and name it for what your installing then when you go to install the new program you can "browse" to that folder and select it as the destination and click ok or open and continue the install and at the end make sure you say ok to a short cut. You can also make a library just like in the C drive with pictures , music and videos and browse to it when your saving any of those things.

 

[taylorswift]

All programs that are either downloaded or loaded by cd will have the C drive as the default destination drive. However most of the install program wll let you change the destiation and the destiation drive. What your best option to do is to go to the secondary hard drive and create a main folder called program files and then from that folder every time you want to install something right click on that program file folder and create a new sub folder and name it for what your installing then when you go to install the new program you can "browse" to that folder and select it as the destination and click ok or open and continue the install and at the end make sure you say ok to a short cut. You can also make a library just like in the C drive with pictures , music and videos and browse to it when your saving any of those things.

This helped me out a lot ty. Whats the difference between saving it in a "Library" or just a picture folder?

 

[tomatthe]

Library is basically a virtual collection of folders. The idea is to make it easier to get to your data, and have it located in various locations.

 

[inzone]

I was just saying that you could do it that way so that it's more organized and you can do it any way that's good for you. Everybody has thier own way and you can create a file system that's easiest for you. The liks below may also help.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/112232-internet-explorer-change-default-download-location.html