Hard drive not recognised

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I purchased a 20 gig Fujitsu h drive in a sale, hooked it up to my old p2 computer, it does recognise it at start up but not in win explorer. It is probably wiped clean, but it is spinning. I have tried setting all drives to auto in set up, different jummper configs on drives, but nothing happens. I have tried a known good drive but still it wont see it. If the computer wont see it how can I format it. I have a feeling the drive is ok and something else is wrong> Interested to hear you views on this one. regards Dotry
 
I assume you are adding it as a 2nd Hard Drive to a computer. Make sure its hooked to the secondary IDE Cable connector, and the cable connector is inserted well enough into the back of the hard drive. Make the 2nd hard drive a slave, you can do that by changing the jumper on the back of that HD.

When all this is done, boot up your comp with a boot disk, run the FDISK command and create a new partition so you can begin using the hard drive
 
You can partition and format hard drives with the Disk Manager utility in Windows XP/2000
 
What OS are you using?

Win95/98 you need to use fdisk (might work from command line, might need to make a startup disk and do it from there.)
Win2k/XP you need to use Logical Disk Manager (access by right-clicking My Computer and then selecting Manage. Logical Disk Manager will be down the left side.)

In both cases, you need to make a new partition of your new drive.

If you tell which OS you have, someone can probably provide you with further details.
 
Thanks for your replies. My os is win98, computer on old p2( not my current m/c). I tried a 500 meg h- disc which I knew was ok with os on it, still wont recognise it. I then tried this in an old P1 machine it came up as ATAPI incompatible pressed f1 and booted from normal mode. Worked ok. When I tried the 20 gig drive, it did seem to see it in w explorer, but showed only 47 meg space after using format option. A few minuets later this drive started clicking, so I think that this drive is no good (never buy this stuff in trunk or car boot fairs). I am thinking that I am confusing myself and the P2 computer and should get a decent new drive. My current computer is a much later Dell, but I left that alone for safteys sake.
 
An old computer like that is bound to have hard drive size issues. You will not be able to use new big hard drives without a BIOS/controller upgrade or special software.
 
From within Windows 98, make a boot/rescue disk (can't remember what they call it). I think you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and it is one of the tabs at the top.

Make the disk and boot up off it. At that point type in fdisk , enable large disk support, and hit opt 4 for display partitions. Make a note of what partitions it says there. If this is installed as a slave drive, you may need to switch which disk it is pointing to within fdisk (can't remember right now how to do that).

This may just be a case where all the partitions need to be blown out and recreated. If you suspect the drive is bad, I think Maxtor has hdd diagnostic software on their site.
 
Thanks tdeg My son did exactly what you suggested. It seems there was something on the drive that was confusing the system, that is why it wasnt always recognised. Once he got fdisk going, he cleared everthing out of it and reformatted. When hooked it up to my latest machine all was ok. 20 gigs of storage all for £1.50 or $3.5 Not bad value. Thanks all for your help
 
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