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Hard drive not showing in My Computer

  • mindfullsilence
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Post February 1st, 2010, 11:30 am

(for the original poster of this thread)

Sounds like you just recently installed windows and this secondary drive is a SATA drive. Windows won't automatically allocate or partition a secondary sata drive when installed. I highly recommend
Powerquest Partition Magic

This program will allocate the drive to a partition and format it to NTFS. That should be all you need to do.
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Post February 1st, 2010, 11:30 am

  • mindfullsilence
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Post February 1st, 2010, 11:37 am

@ant_jar

You were writing data to the hard drive when it was unplugged, which means some files are partial or missing. Computers automatically read and index the contents of a hard drive when you plug them in. So when you plug in your hard drive, the computer tries to index partial files and is unable to find the rest of those partial files on the drive, so it gives up trying to load the drive. You need to format the drive. To do this go to:

control panel(classic view) > Administrative Tools > Disk Management.
Right-Click on the drive that is not working and click "Format". Click "OK" on the dialogue that appears.

Note: This will cause you to lose all data on the hard drive. Unfortunately, it's the only solution that I know of. So considering it's your only solution, you've essentially lost your data already.
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  • grinch2171
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Post February 1st, 2010, 12:47 pm

mindfullsilence wrote:
(for the original poster of this thread)

Sounds like you just recently installed windows and this secondary drive is a SATA drive. Windows won't automatically allocate or partition a secondary sata drive when installed. I highly recommend
Powerquest Partition Magic

This program will allocate the drive to a partition and format it to NTFS. That should be all you need to do.


What?? Are you serious?? Since when does Windows not allocate to SATA drives?? Why are the majority of hard drives being sold in Windows boxes SATA?? I guess the 48TB SATA SANs I have are somehow magically being seen by Windows. Same with the 836GB RAID-5 array I currently have in my PC, which happens to be SAS which is far more "advanced" than SATA. I would love to know where you got this information from.

And another point, you don't allocate a drive to a partition.
‎"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." Maj. Gen. James Mattis
  • mindfullsilence
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Post February 1st, 2010, 5:11 pm

calm down there buddy, don't get too crazy :P

When you have multiple sata drives and install windows on one of them with no raid set up, windows won't allocate the other drives. You have to do it yourself. Yes, the drive that you installed windows on will be allocated; but xp for some reason won't allocate the others. Why do I know this? I just built my system 3 days ago and had to do this.

Note: We're both correct. If a hard drive comes preformatted to the NTFS file system then windows will recognize it, but the point i was making was to get his hard drive to work. So I explained how to fix HIS situation. His drive was obviously not preformatted to the NTFS file system, so he needs to allocate the space for the drive and format it to a file system.
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  • ant_jar
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Post February 1st, 2010, 7:21 pm

thanks for your quick replies dudes...

But problem is that, I cant see my hard-disk in disk-management :(. only in disk-drives i can see that hard disk.

The maxtor external hard-disk has 4 partitions. all partions has almost full data.

which means that, it is not a new disk.

while i am retriving data it is unplugged.

dose it mean that i lost all data.

can i retrive data again using retriving tools :P
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Post February 1st, 2010, 7:24 pm

but when i connect the hard disk of the usb to the computer, i can see the notification on the desk-top that usb- is connected to the computer.
  • JohnnyBoyClub
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Post May 26th, 2010, 7:35 am

Did you tried to format your computer ? and maybe other OS and see what happens then ? I suggest to backup your data before that so you can recover quickly over the loss ( you can use an free online storage backup software like Dmailer Backup Software

Hope you will get things working
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Post May 28th, 2010, 9:50 am

Try replacing the SATA Cable might work for you.
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Post June 9th, 2010, 7:22 am

JP 0116 wrote:
I was just wondering if anyone could help me with a problem im having with my hard drive . It kind of relates to the problem for this thread .. Basically I was using my pc one night when i was getting these error windows. During this time all I was doing was dragging and dropping stuff off one external hard drive to a newer one. So I restarted the pc and could never get back into windows. Kept saying a hard ware or electrical malfunction could of caused the problem . please run the fix or start normally . So I did both . No luck . So I took it to Best buy where i bought the serive plan an they ran a test and the hard drive is bad. They swapped it out for a new one free .. And gave me the old hard drive .. I want to try to recover stuff of it . So I plugged it in my pc . Doesnt show in my computer or management .. But it shows in my bios . Now If i put it in a external enclosure it shows in my computer but takes for ever to double click it . and once it goes through it says this drive is not yet formatted would u like to ? Of course i clicked no . for now . So anyone have any other ideas on what i can do to recover data . My favorites for IE. i mean its not life or death stuff but there are things i cant replace.

By the way .. SATA Hard drive . Im running Vista ..



There are many methods where you can recover your data. For the first you can try http://www.google and search for any data recovery free softwares ( this process will take a lot of time and may not recover all your files but for sure it will recover a part of them )
From now one backup your data continuosly , i also sugest to use Dmailer Backup Software , is free and you can also store your backup safe online.
I think you should also make from time to time restore points from windows .
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Post August 16th, 2010, 2:12 am

It sounds like you haven't formatted your new disk yet. Right click on My Computer and choose Manage. Then browse to your disks and find the unformatted disk and format it as NTFS or FAT32, should be all better.
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Post July 24th, 2011, 6:38 pm

Wow! Thank you guys SO much. I was about ready to punch the wall with this - got new HD, did the jumper, installed it - BIOS / Setup was seeing it, but XP hadn't given it a drive letter. No instructions in box or Western Digital website explained how to solve this.

Googled the question and was lead here - followed your suggestion and it's working! Thank you so much. I seriously would like to throw $20 your way .... the co-pay I'd have spent if I'd punched the wall :-)

Do you guys have a PayPal account?

THANKS AGAIN SO MUCH! $ aside, you really made a difference to my sanity tonight. Good job.
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Post July 25th, 2011, 12:15 pm

One question - I'm replacing an old (7 year old) HD that was running out of space, making terrible groaning and grinding noises and otherwise indicating (slow response, etc) that it's on its way to the great hereafter for hard drives.

Now that the new one is hooked up and being recognized and has its very own drive letter (D:), can I just XCOPY the C: drive over, remove the C: HD, made D: the master drive? Are there any necessary parameters for XCOPY to ensure this will work? I know in the past there was an issue with "short filenames", but I've heard the newer versions of XCOPY will address them if the proper switch is used - are these the right swtiches? --

xcopy c:\*.* d:./e/c/h/r/k

THANKS AGAIN!

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