Internal Hard Drive

[Anastasia_Line]

I'm stumped. I bought an internal hard drive and literally just switched it out with the old one and it's not finding it. I have a SSD for my OS so I'm able to do everything on my computer but I can't access my files which I stored on the hard drive. I hooked it up, plugged everything in where the old one was. Can anyone tell me what the problem might be?

Follow up: I think I need a driver but I went to the Seagate website and entered the S/N and they said no firmware found. Not sure what to do now.

DiscWizard (downloaded from Seagate) can find the drive so I'm sure nothing is wrong with it. But it won't install a driver. Does anyone have any idea how I can find a driver for this hard drive?

 

[Autocrat]

Can you see the drive in disk management? It might just need to be formatted.

 

[Blackink]

Google: Initialize my hard drive

If you format the hard drive, you'll lose any files on it.

 

[Anastasia_Line]

Can you see the drive in disk management? It might just need to be formatted.

Now I'm really confused... I went to device manager and tried to install the driver and it says that the best driver is already installed. If that is the case, then why can't I access the driver?

I'm feeling a little IT-illiterate today and this isn't like me. Normally I have no problem with installing devices, hardware, etc.

 

[Blackink]

Can you double check all the cables to make sure you've plugged them in all the way?
It's easy to miss something like that....

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Anastasia_Line,

You need to go to Disk Management, not Device Manager.
I don't really think you should install drivers or update firmware. Most probably, you will need to initialize -> partition and format the drive, as it is a new one. ( just like Blackink suggested)

What do you mean by "I can't access my files which I stored on the hard drive"? Did you back up the data stored on your old HDD, before taking it out of the system?

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[Anastasia_Line]

The old drive had already started rattling so when I removed it (I was going to put it in the expansion bay) it died. It's beyond dead. However, you are correct in that I needed to go to "disk management" not "device manager". The new drive is all formatted and working fine. I was going to the wrong place.

As for my old drive, I had backed up most of it, I only lost a little. I didn't realize how close it was to crashing completely. It's hard to believe that just unplugging it killed it off for good.

When it didn't work in the expansion drive I tried putting it back in it's original bay and it's a goner.

Thank God I had backed up most of it, I only lost a few files that I can live without.