New
#1
Hard Drive Not Recognized in Windows 7
I have a Dell T3500 with one (1) hard drive. I want to add a 2nd SATA hard drive. I'm running Win 7
64-bit in a non RAID configuration.
My C:\ drive is connected to the SATA-2 port on the mobo.
I installed the 2nd drive and connected it to the SATA-0 on the mobo.
First question: does this matter? Do I have to order them nicely (SATA-0, SATA-1, etc.) or not?
At first my 2nd hard disk was not visible in Windows Explorer. It wasn't even visible in Disk Management. But I managed to solve that myself. I Googled it and turns out you have to F2 your way into the BIOS and there are checkboxes which SATA is activated, or not. Turns out SATA-0 was deactivated. So I activated it and could not boot. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and changed the boot sequence in the BIOS. Back in business. So now my hard disk is recognized and visible in Disk Management.
Second question: do I have to format it?
The 2nd hard disk is shown in Disk Management as Disk 1. It has 4 volumes:
2.38 GB Healthy
2.00 GB Healthy
128 MB Unallocated
1858.51 GB Healthy
Right clicking the Healthy volumes only shows one option: Delete Volume. The rest is greyed out.
Right clicking the Unallocated volume shows one option: New Simple Volume.
Third question: now what? Can I reduce the number of volumes?