Expert: Chris Morrison Date: 5/31/2008 Subject: PC Not Recognizing New Hard Drive
Question I have an HP Pavillion Desktop (Model a6242n) it came with Vista Home and has a 300GB HDD. Today I added a 500GB SATA HDD (Samsumng)and my system will not recognized this new HDD. I went to my CMOS (BIOS) and had it auto detect the new drive and it appeared to have done so,however, when I started up my PC. Again the new HDD was not recognized. What can I do to correct this problem and get my HP Pavillion to recognize the new drive.
Answer the drive most likely has no partitions so it won't show up in my computer.
Right click my computer and choose manage. Scroll down to disk management. On the right, in the bottom windows you should see both disk drives. The new drive is mostly likely black instead of blue or yellow. Just right click the new drive (make sure it is the new one or you erase your windows), and choose create partition. Choose the full size and choose format. It may take a moment to finish formatting but it should show up when it's done.
i am assuming that you are using SATA drives. IDE drives will need the jumpers set correctly to function together.
