new hard drive not recognized

[jcuralli]

I just purchased a new Western Digital 120G Hard Drive for my computer. When I boot up, it stated that the hard drive is recognized and has all the correct information, however, when I look for it in the windows explorer window (windows 98SE) it does not appear. It is not the only hard drive on the system, the jumpers and cables are all correct, my other hard drive is SCSI, this one is EIDE, and there is one other zip drive sharing the IDE cable with it. Any suggestions?

 

[mainegeek]

Did you partition and format it?

 

[jcuralli]

I attempted to format it, but I couldn't figure out specifically how to do it- I suck with Hard Drives- I'm more of a I/O kind of guy.

 

[calvin2]

I suck with Hard Drives- I'm more of a I/O kind of guy.

If this is so, then you need to use Western Digital's HDD Utility... comes in very handy... you can get it at this site:

http://support.wdc.com/download/

 

[wolluf]

jcuralli - as mainegeek said you need to partition and format it.

To partition it, run fdisk from a dos prompt. Change to second hard drive (option 5). Then just create one or more partitions. When complete, reboot machine and the partition(s) - drive(s) will now be available to be formatted. Dos prompt again, then format x:, for each - where x: is drive letter.

 

[PeterGriff]

Also, if you suck with hard drives I would suggest unplugging your old drive before using fdisk and format, then you are assured that you are dealing with the correct drive as it will be the only one accessable (nothing worse than realising that you JUST did the wrong drive). Use these utilities fom a Win98 Boot disk (copy fdisk and format.com from the c:/windows/command folder). Note that there is an updated version of format.com from Microsoft for large drives (I cant remember the size details) so make sure you have the newer version.

Peter G

 

[wolluf]

Good point Peter (its drives > 64GB and fdisk rather than format) -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q263044.

I think format may still show wrong values - but actually works correctly.

 

[jcuralli]

Thanks guys0 I finally got the darn thing to work- took a little bit of switching around, but it's good to go now!

 

[jcuralli]

Thanks guys. I finally got the darn thing to work- took a little bit of switching around, but it's good to go now!