I just installed the RC1 (Build 7100) from Build 7077 and my secondary 500gb HDD will not show up in explorer. I've checked my BIOS and it is listed there as a slave. How can I get Win7 to recognize my HDD?
The first step to take when any separate hard drive internal or external isn't seen with an assigned drive letter is to vist the Disk Management tool. That's found in the "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage".
If the drive is seen "offline" that will mean you will need to see it initialized provided there is an MS partition on the drive like Fat32 or NTFS and not raw, unpartitioned or any other partition type for another OS like Linux. For Linux you would need a separate tool available to see it mounted in Windows.
Sometimes all you need to do there is click the refresh or rescan options if there isn't any prompting to format the drive. Then you simply right click on the visible partition and select the change drive letter option in order to select a free drive letter.
W7 Ultimate x64/W10 Pro x64/W11 Pro Triple Boot - Main PC W7 Remote PC Micro ATX W7 Pro x64/W11 Pro
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 975 Deneb 3.6ghz - 965 2nd remote pc
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4-Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H remote pc
Memory
Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 1.5v 16gb - Hyper X Fury 8gb 2nd
Graphics Card(s)
MSI HD Radeon 5750 1gb - MSI HD Radeon 6450 on mini tower
Sound Card
Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Audio P - Realtek onooard 2nd case
Monitor(s) Displays
ASUS VW199T-P 19" HP 2082a Main-HP 2082a 20" remote pc
Screen Resolution
Asus 1440x900 - HP 1600x900
Hard Drives
WD Black 1TB HD per OS W7, W10, and pending W11 presently on 500gb OS Drive - Pending Triple 1TB HDs for Spanned Storage/backup volume
Single 2TB external USB enclosure, single 1TB System 7 Host/Boot drive, Pending 8TB external HD for system image b
PSU
Corsair 750TX - primary / Corsair CX600 - second
Case
Antec 900-2 - SSD compatible / NZXT Vulcan mini tower
Glad to see you got that going and didn't end up needing to format it! That can happen at times when Windows for some reason won't mount a drive fully.
W7 Ultimate x64/W10 Pro x64/W11 Pro Triple Boot - Main PC W7 Remote PC Micro ATX W7 Pro x64/W11 Pro
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 975 Deneb 3.6ghz - 965 2nd remote pc
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4-Gigabyte GA-880GM-D2H remote pc
Memory
Kingston Hyper X DDR3 1600 1.5v 16gb - Hyper X Fury 8gb 2nd
Graphics Card(s)
MSI HD Radeon 5750 1gb - MSI HD Radeon 6450 on mini tower
Sound Card
Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Audio P - Realtek onooard 2nd case
Monitor(s) Displays
ASUS VW199T-P 19" HP 2082a Main-HP 2082a 20" remote pc
Screen Resolution
Asus 1440x900 - HP 1600x900
Hard Drives
WD Black 1TB HD per OS W7, W10, and pending W11 presently on 500gb OS Drive - Pending Triple 1TB HDs for Spanned Storage/backup volume
Single 2TB external USB enclosure, single 1TB System 7 Host/Boot drive, Pending 8TB external HD for system image b
PSU
Corsair 750TX - primary / Corsair CX600 - second
Case
Antec 900-2 - SSD compatible / NZXT Vulcan mini tower
That can happen at times when Windows for some reason won't mount a drive fully.