Unallocated hard drive

[charzard]

(before I start I have read the relevant threads associated with my problem and they're no help)

I just upgraded to windows 8 , I also bought a new ssd drive.

On the installation I wiped my old traditional mechanical hard drive and put the os on my new ssd.

The ssd is fully working however I can't view my old drive in windows explorer , only in 'disk management' , and as one would expect it is 'un-allocated' .

When I right click the drive there is a load of options I can't select and then 'convert to dynamic disk' and 'convert to gpt disk', do I need to convert my drive to either of these to allocate it a letter?

I can also access the drive properties which show the device as working properly.

Any suggestions on how I can get the drive working again (able to view in explorer and modify/read files)?

Thanks.

EDIT: also note my mechanical drive used to be connected to sata port 1 , I now have the ssd connected to 1 and mechanical 2 - not sure if this is relevant.

 

[sub mesa]

Windows does not support formatting harddrives with NTFS, it only supports formatting partitions on harddrives. Thus, this requires you have a partition scheme on your disks first. Either MBR or GPT. Once you have done that, you can create a partition spanning the full drive and finally assign a drive letter to it.

Thus, you do not assign a drive letter to a harddrive, but rather to a partition on the harddrive instead.

 

[charzard]

Windows does not support formatting harddrives with NTFS, it only supports formatting partitions on harddrives. Thus, this requires you have a partition scheme on your disks first. Either MBR or GPT. Once you have done that, you can create a partition spanning the full drive and finally assign a drive letter to it.

Thus, you do not assign a drive letter to a harddrive, but rather to a partition on the harddrive instead.

So what your saying is I should select the 'convert to gpt disk' (I don't see mbr as an option?)

do either of these offer specific peformance bonuses or shall I just select gpt over dynamic disk?

 

[sub mesa]

If you do not need to boot from the disk (a data disk) and you are not going to use older operating systems like Windows XP, then GPT is recommended.

 

[charzard]

If you do not need to boot from the disk (a data disk) and you are not going to use older operating systems like Windows XP, then GPT is recommended.

Changed to gpt , not sure how to create the partition or change drive letter . I still can't see the option in disk manager when I have it selected...

Any suggestions?

EDIT: don't worry , for some reason I was right clicking the side not middle which was why I couldn't create the volume xD ^

 

[sub mesa]

Cheers!