Solved Hard Drive Not Recognized in Windows 7

[Dragonchaser]

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?

 

[Mellon Head]

Is this a used drive? Those are odd partitions.

I wouldn't bother doing anything with the 128 MB partition. It's not big enough to worry about, and it won't affect performance.

As far as the 2.xx GB partitions, I don't know what to make of those. I suppose you could just delete them and then extend the 1858 GB partition to take up the space.

For HD maintenance and setting up your HD, here are some useful tutorials offered by the good fols here at Sevenforums:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2668-partition-volume-delete.html?filter[2]=Hardware%20and%20Drivers

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html?filter[2]=Hardware%20and%20Drivers

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html?filter[2]=Hardware%20and%20Drivers

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html?filter[2]=Hardware%20and%20Drivers

It's a bit of reading, but it will give you all of the tools you need to set up that HD properly. And yes, you should format it unless there is data on it that you want to save.

 

[Dragonchaser]

Hello Mellon Head,

Thanks for replying!

Yes, it is used. It used to be in a Synology NAS which makes it Linux formatted, right?

I was reading those tuts, thank you so much, and what seems strange to me is my 2nd hard drive does not seem to show up when using diskpart. I see it in Disk Management but it ain't there in diskpart. Weird.

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DELL-T3500-PC

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 D DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy System
Volume 2 C Win7 NTFS Partition 931 GB Healthy Boot

DISKPART>


Perhaps I should put it back into a Synology NAS, delete it from there and then format it in Windows?

 

[Mellon Head]

It's weird that you can't see it in Diskpart. You might be better off doing things in Disk Management, or as you say, putting it back in the NAS and deleting the partition there. At least that might get you going.

 

[Dragonchaser]

Quick follow-up. I did it in Disk Management:

- Right clicked the Healthy volumes and selected Delete Volume. That made them Unallocated.
- Right clicking them also combines them (2 x 2 GB unallocated automatically created 1 x 4 GB unallocated. Makes sense, it just adds up whatever is unallocated.
- Right clicked the last Unallocated volume (2 TB in total) and selected New Simple Volume and now I have one (1) volume, exactly what I wanted.

 

[Mellon Head]

Excellent. I'm so glad it worked.