Windows 7 not finding second hard drive?

Tailacoster

Reputable
Feb 22, 2015
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4,510
So I just got a new computer, and I want to move my old, second hard drive over to the new one. I have everything plugged in correctly, even after watching a few tutorials to be 100% positive. The thing is, my computer isn't detecting the hard drive, and I can't find it anywhere in the 'My Computer' section. Do I have to do something to turn on the hard drive slot? Or do I have to do something more complicated? Any help is appreciated, thank you to all in advance!
 
Solution
First I would boot to the bios and check to see that the drive is listed there. If you have and it is then go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage. Open the Storage section and then Disk Management. There you should see the missing disk as a disk with no name (Letter). At the top of the window you opened are the disks listed under the Heading "Volume" column. Right click on the un-named volume and you will see the option to give it a drive letter. Once you do that it should appear in the My Computer section.
First I would boot to the bios and check to see that the drive is listed there. If you have and it is then go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage. Open the Storage section and then Disk Management. There you should see the missing disk as a disk with no name (Letter). At the top of the window you opened are the disks listed under the Heading "Volume" column. Right click on the un-named volume and you will see the option to give it a drive letter. Once you do that it should appear in the My Computer section.
 
Solution
Alright. After booting to Bios, I found that it detected 2 "physical disks", which I believe means it has detected both my hard drives. I navigated to Disk Management, and I found an unnamed disk called "Disk 1", but only in the bottom box. In the top box, I have "(C: )" and "HP_RECOVERY (D: )" (ignore spaces after colons). Those two are also in the bottom box, but not the unnamed disk. Any way to get it to appear up there? Thanks!
 
I'm not sure I can initialize it and assign it a letter from the bottom though. When I right click the small box that says "Disc 1 -- Dynamic -- Foreign", on the left-hand side of the bottom box, my non-grayed out options are "Import Foreign Disks", "Convert to Basic Disk", "Offline", "Properties" and "Help". Are one of these the buttons I need to click?
 
Well, the drives listed are Disk 0, Disk 1, and CD-ROM. To the right of Disk 0, there is the C Drive and the HP_Recovery D drive. Disk 1 and CD-ROM 0 have nothing to the right of them. The box that should contain the information that says how big the drive is only says 'Dynamic' and under that 'Foreign', which is in Disc 1.
 
One thing worth noting, both hard drives are being connected to the power supply through one cord 'track' you could say. Basically, a bundle of cords is going out to the first drive, then the SATA plug is plugged in. After that, more cords are coming out of that SATA plug, which leads about an inch to the next drive, where the next SATA plug is plugged in. So 2 SATA plugs for one track, or bundle of cords. Is it possible the power supply isn't reaching the second hard drive? Should I try to play around with the cords a bit more?