Formatting second HDD

[death791]

Hi all im adding a second hard drive to my computer, I have a Crucial M4 256gb SSD as my primary boot drive and today I picked up a WD black 1TB HHD for my storage drive. now I have had my SSD installed and running in my computer for about 2 months and all the games etc.. I plan on deleting off the ssd and putting on the WD HDD, I hooked up the WD HDD to a open sata port and have the sata power cable hooked up as well. Now I need to know how to format the new second drive in windows 7. im new to win7 so I have never done this before but if I go into My Computer the new Second Hard drive doesnt show up, just my SSD and my CD Drive does. So I Was seeing if anyone could tell me how I can setup and format my second hard drive to be my storage drive thanks alot!

 

[cliffordcooley]

You can format and assign drive letters through Windows Disk Manager.

1. Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools
2. Select Computer Management
3. Look to the left and you will see Disk Management

The easiest way would be to type "create and format" in the Start Menu search box. This will take you straight to Disk Management.

 

[death791]

Ok thanks for the reply, now when I go into disk manager it is only showing my cd drive and SSD, my 1tb HDD isnt showing up, nor in BIOS when I look just my SSD and CD Drive show up, but if I unplug my sata data and power cable from my SSD and just boot up with my HDD plugged in my HDD will show up in BIOS but if I try to boot up off my HDD it shows windows inst install on it. Maybe I have to do I fresh install of windows with both drives hooked up? or im totally doing something wrong lol btw the SSD is setup in AHCI not RAID maybe thats the problem?

 

[death791]

Ok nevermind that last post maybe, from disk manager I selected view -> Top -> Disk List. now both the SSD and HDD show up. now when I right click on the HDD it gives me to options, 1. Convert to Dynamic Disk or 2. Convert to GPT Disk. which do I go with? thanks again

 

[SNGX1275]

Doesn't matter. I'd go with GPT just because dynamic doesn't sound right and GPT is the way of the future.

 

[death791]

Ok now I wanna clear off my ssd totally and just restart win7, anit virus, etc.. I have my win7 pro disc how can I do this? I tried reinstalling win7 but it still keeps my old data on my ssd and I wanna remove it all for a fresh install.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Windows 7 has tools that will allow for formating during installation. When selecting which partition you want to install to, look for advanced options. The advanced options is where you need to be for partitioning tools.