Get computer to recognize 2nd hard drive

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lil_devil

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i have recently finished formatting my mom's computer and i have everything done except i cant find the 2nd hard drive we have. I am unsure of how i go about getting the computer to recognize it. i wiped the whole computer C & D (D was always the 2nd hard drive) and now we can only find c and the d is back to the cd drive that doesnt work. All i need it for the computer to recognize this so we can have our storage drive back. Can anyone please help.
 
Its not in my device manager and no where in my disk management. Now i think i just may have had a brain lapse and forgot to partion the d drive. Will that cause my computer to not recognize it? i can always go in and do that but i am just unsure if i remembered to do that
 
I assume this is an internal hard drive? (not an external drive?)

1. It should first be recognized at the hardware level and appear in Device Manager before it can appear in Disk Management. (Sequnce should be:
Connect hardware-> Appears in DevMgr under Disks-> Appears in Disk Managemrnt-> Appears in My Computer and Explorer

2. Might you have a cabling or jumpering issue? (i'll let the hardware guys on here explore that if might be the case)

3. Also try this
  • Make sure all your devices are connected and powered on
  • Click Start->Run, enter: msinfo32. Click the + sign next to Components to expand it
  • Click Problem Devices. Anything appear?
  • If yes, click on it, Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy it, Ctrl-V to paste into next post
 
Are you sure you had 2 hard drives to begin with and not just a 2nd partition on 1 hard drive? If you just had 1 drive with 2 partitions and you deleted those, and then did the Windows install to a new partition you probably just have a large single partition on the drive.
 
i had 2 seperate internal hard drives to begin with. The one for my operating system and a lil 40GB for storage of files to be transfered to disks. My mom just took it to a computer place and they finished it. She said a week to figure all this stuff out was too long to be without her computer. Thanks anyways guys. Would have been nice to be walked through this so i know for next time she needs it done what i am suppose to do :)
 
Just fyi.. and as a bit of a debugging example of the sequence when you connect a disk...

I used my HTC Hero cell phone for the example below. (For this case, the phone appears as an external USB drive). Note the snapshots below were taken BEFORE and AFTER the logical disk volume was mounted

  1. I connect my HTC Phone to my XP computer.
  2. I can hear the Windows "ding dong" when the hardware recognizes device connected
  3. I can look in Device Manager and Disk Management (see below) to see
    • Device Manager. Two drivers appear
      > Under Disk (HTC Android Phone USB Device) and
      > Under USB (USB Mass Storage Device) since the phone looks like a USB Mass Storage device of Type=Disk
    • In Disk Management, note a new Disk # appears but no media or partition is associated with it because the logical disk volume hasn't been mounted yet
  4. My phone prompts me to "mount" the SD card in Windows (which also means Windows must recognize a valid filesystem on the SD card)
  5. AFTER the logical disk is mounted, only then do you see in Disk Management: partition info in the lower pane and a logical drive letter (F:) appear in the upper pane (btw: i have to close and reopen Disk Management to see the updated info as DM doesn't refresh on its own)
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