New Hard Drive Working, but not allowing access

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Hey, me again. I have another problem with my new PC. I just bought a new HD, a Western Digital 320GB SATA. I'm already running another HD (same model) for my main. Now, the new driver is recognized by the BIOS, and by the Device Manager in Windows Vista. However, when I go to the My Computer Window, it fails to show up, thus not allowing me access. I've already changed the power and the SATA cable, but it has no effect. Anyone know what the problem is? Or should I just return it and try another model?
 
Look in your BIOS to assure that it has been enabled there. Then if it has, go to Control Panel-> Administrative Tools-> Computer Management -> Disk Manager as well as Device Manager and work at checking and updating the settings.
Also check your SATA cables to assure they will handle the level of SATA of that drive, and be sure the SATA socket is clean.
 
Did you format it? If your new hd doesn't have file system, you won't be able to see it in My Computer.
 
True, hard drives are not seen in MyComputer until formatted, but they should be seen elsewhere. Otherwise, you could not format them.
The drive may not be seen in Disk Management because of the View setting for the utility. To check this, select View from the top menu bar of Disk Management. (Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management).
For Top, select Volume List and for the Bottom, select Graphical View. Once the settings have been selected, go to the menu bar of Disk Management and select Action, then Rescan Disks. The drive should now be visible in the bottom right-hand window.
 
I tried going through the Disk management route, but it wasn't showing up. After a while I chalked it up to it just being a bad HD. I returned it and they gave me a new one. The new one is the same model, but works perfectly. But thanks for the help guys!

Also, as an interesting side note, the store I get most of my Hardware from is also a tech help spot. Their Tech specialist mentioned in passing that about 1 out of every 10 HDs produced go bad almost immediately. So for anyone else experiencing that problem, hope that is helpful.
 
meplaybass said:
Also, as an interesting side note, the store I get most of my Hardware from is also a tech help spot. Their Tech specialist mentioned in passing that about 1 out of every 10 HDs produced go bad almost immediately. So for anyone else experiencing that problem, hope that is helpful.

Glad you got it sorted, but I wouldn't trust everything those guys tell you. I have heard a load of rubbish from 'techs' in the shops, and speaking from experience I'd say the failure rate is a lot lower than that these days. Maybe he's stuck in 1984 :p
 
Interesting to see the different perspectives. We have been doing tech support and repair since 1986. Since August of 1997, we have gone through 2743 hard drives installs, where we purchased new drives that were shipped though the roughest of UPS, FedEx, and USPS conditions.

Before 1997, we saw perhaps that many more with huge numbers of failures of Quantum, Fujica, Conner, Hitachi, IBM Deskstar, IBM Travel Star, and Maxtor drives... perhaps 900 or more.

But in the past 10 years, we had failures of 11 Western Digital 60 & 80 GB desktop drivesl, 4 Western Digital laptop drives, 7 Hitachi TravelStar, 113 Maxtor drives, 1 Seagate Desktop drive, 3 Seagate laptop drives, and 1 Toshiba laptop drive failure. Except for the high failures of the Maxtor, that failure percentage is very low.

I think your buddy's report of 10 percent failures is full of baloney. Subtracting out that 113 Maxtors, which put them out of business, the failure rates we see have been less than one percent... not bad when part of those failures were due to stupidity, anger, abuse, and the UPS driver.

It is just extremely rare to have a hard drive fail, unless it suffered hard impact during shipment... We track all component failures of our regular clients and corporate contacts.... Only DVD and CD optical drives, eMachines, and Sony VAIOS have unreasonable failure rates.

The fact that Seagate is now comfortable in giving a five year warranty, and Samsung soon will do so, is a good indicator
 
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