installing new hard drive; not recognized (?)

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I’m new at this hardware stuff, so please bear with me….

I’m trying to install a second hard drive (temporarily) so that I can transfer some files from my primary drive to it, then reformat my primary drive and copy the files back from the secondary drive.

I have a Dell Dimension XPS T450, 9 gig hd, 96 mb ram, one hard drive, one cd-rw, one cd-rom. The cd-rw and cd-rom are on the same ide cable (the cd-rom at the end). The hard drive is on a different ide cable, but it does have an empty middle connection.

I disconnected the ide cable and power from the cd-rw and connected these to the second hard drive. I booted up and ran ‘add new hardware’ in control panel. But, the second hard drive does not show up in windows explorer (the cd-rw was drive e: before I disconnected it).

What am I doing wrong (or just not doing)?

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On the back of the harddrive, there is a jumper you’re going to have to make sure its in the right spot. If your primary HD is set to master, make sure the secnd is set to slave, otherwise they both need to be set to CS (cable select) Also, you don’t need to run the Hardware wizard, your OS should just see it.

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Thanks much! Is there a standard to the order of the jumpers (they’re not marked on this drive). Currently, the second jumper is selected.

Thanks again.

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what kind of drive is it

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Maxtor, model 90750D6

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actually, i just reset the jumper and installed the second drive on the middle connection of the primary drive’s ide connector. the bios appears to recognize it…when booting up, it lists drive 0 and then drive 1 (as maxtor). but there is no letter assigned to the second drive in windows explorer.

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Does FDISK recognize the drive? It may need to partitioned with FDISK and then Formatted.

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yes, fdisk recognizes it. but still, there’s no drive letter assigned so i’m confused about how to format it, etc…

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If FDISK recognizes the drive, but there are no drive letters assigned, then that most likely means that you need to use FDISK to create a partition or partitions on the drive. In FDISK, choose the option to “Display partition information” (probably option 4). If that does not show any pratitions or logical drives, and shows all of the disk space as free, then you need to use the FDISK option to Create a partition. If this is not going to be a bootable disk, then you probably want to create an Extended partition. After creating the Extended partition, then you can create as many logical drives as you want. Once the logical drives are created, you should be able to format them.

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got it! thank you both for all your great help!!!!!

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yes, if the bios sees it, you need to partitiin it and format it. FDISK and FORMAT

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