Solved Western Digital 1TB Drive not showing up in My Computer

[obidon]

I just installed my new WDC WD1001FALS ATA drive today and it's not showing up in my computer.

In device manager and System Information it is there so I know it is not a loose connection problem. How can I get this to show up so I can start using it?

Right now my 320 GB drive that I've been using for the past couple years has only about 3 GB left on it so I really need to get this new terabyte drive working ASAP lol.

I have it connected to my SATA2_1 slot on my motherboard and the 320 Seagate drive in the SATA2_0 slot. It's my first time installing an internal drive so I'm not really sure what else needs to be done to get it fully working and usable.

Also when I do get it working do you suggest partitioning at all?

Thanks for the help and replies.

 

[FerchogtX]

Go to Start Menu -> Right click on Computer -> Manage, and then go to Disk Management and see if it is there, if you see your drive, then create a partition and format... it happens always with new disks that are unformatted.

See ya!!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Also when I do get it working do you suggest partitioning at all?

There are pro and con arguments to a single or 2 partitions. It's mostly personal preference and habit.

I tend to use 2 partitions on my primary drive if I have only 2 drives, like this:

Drive 1: C for Windows and D for data
Drive 2: Backup only

But if I have a 3 drive system, I do it like this:

Drive 1: C: Windows only
Drive 2: D: Data only
Drive 3: E: Backup only

If you do use 2 partitions, you may sooner or later wish you had made one of the partitions a different size. In that sense, a single partition makes more efficient use of the total space available.

I assume you have a second drive of some type for backup purposes.

 

[obidon]

OK thanks for the responses guys, got it to show up now.

Unfortunatley ignatzatsonic, this is my first other drive that I can now start using for backup purposes. My first drive isn't partitioned either so I guess I've been kinda risky leaving my data and the Windows files in the same drive/partition for so long.

Shouldn't have to worry about that now though. So my last question is this. Is there anything I should do before I start using my Terabyte to it's full extent? I plan on using a lot of space pretty quickly since I'll be transferring some data over and downloading large files, and I don't want anything to go wrong once I start doing this.

Is there a program I should use to test the drive initially or periodically to make sure that I can get the best use out of this drive for the future?

Thanks

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Most people would just dive in, partition it as desired, quick format the partitions, and put data on it immediately.

If you want to be extra careful, you could do a full format rather than a quick format. That will probably take several hours.

And you could download Western Digital's utilities for the drive and run them on the drive before you put data on it.

You should probably download the WD utilities anyway as they will let you keep track of the SMART attributes of the drive which often can point out weaknesses in the drive before it actually fails.

There is nothing inherently wrong about having Windows and data on the same drive in the same partition. What is important is that you back up your data to another physical hard drive, regardless of your partition setup on the Windows drive.