*RESOLVED* 3rd Hard Drive detected in BIOS but NOT in Windows

[zeroneleven]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me with this problem. I have two WD SATA drives (WD3200AAKS & WD6400AAKS) which have worked fine for a few months. Now I'm trying to install a third SATA drive (another WD6400AAKS).
BIOS detects it on IDE Channel 2 (Master) with correct specs. AHCI and RAID are disabled. During bootup, I can see all 3 drives detected at POST.
My problem is that Windows XP doesn't detect the third drive. When I go to Computer Management > Disk Manager, there's no sign of the drive. I see no way to format the drive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[hclarkjr]

is this a brand new drive that has not been formated yet?

 

[hclarkjr]

did you try booting to the xp cd and try formating it from there?

 

[zeroneleven]

Originally posted by: hclarkjr
is this a brand new drive that has not been formated yet?

yes

Originally posted by: hclarkjr
did you try booting to the xp cd and try formating it from there?

I will try that right now and let you know.
Thanks.

 

[zeroneleven]

Ok I think that did it! Booting from the Windows setup CD, it showed the 3rd drive as unpartitioned space. So I'm now in the process of formatting it! I assume (and hope) Windows will show the new drive once it's finished.

One quick question: This won't erase anything from my other drives, correct?!?

Thank you SO much, hclarkjr for your help!

 

[sonnygdude]

It shouldn't affect your other drives. You can also format different partitions on the same drive without affecting the other partitions. Good luck!

 

[zeroneleven]

Well, it seemed to finish formatting the new drive, then it started copying some files. I was afraid that it was overwriting files on my main drive, so I quickly restarted the computer. I booted to Windows and checked Disk Manager, but there;s still no sign of the drive. Booting from the Windows install CD showed that the new drive was indeed partitioned. But I think I may have aborted the formatting process before it was completely finished. I may try it again, but I'm still worried about Windows setup erasing stuff on my other drives..

Could the problem have something to do with the fact that the SATA power cable for the hard drive is shared with my SATA DVD-R drive?

 

[myocardia]

The Windows install CD does exactly that-- installs Windows. The only way to format a drive/partition with the Windows disc is to also install Windows on it. Here's how to add a drive:

1) Right-click on My Computer.
2) Select "Manage" from the drop-down box that will appear.
3) Click on "Disk Management", in the lefthand pane.
4) In the bottom-most window, scroll down to your new drive, which will be called Disk 1, assuming you only have a single hard drive now.
5) Right-click on the drive, and select "New Partion", and follow the instructions.
6) Last, right-click on the drive again, and select "Full Format, NTFS".

As soon as it's finished formatting, it's ready to use. You'll want to delete the partition first, because it's now unusable, then recreate it. You can do that either with the Windows install disc, or you can do it from the Windows Disk Management.

 

[zeroneleven]

myocardia, the problem was that the new disk wasn't showing up in Disk Management.

I say "was" because I finally figured out the problem! It turns out that in Device Manager, under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" all the previously unused IDE Channel devices were set to "None" instead of "Auto Detection" (under the Advanced tab). This was preventing the new drive from being seen in Windows.

Thanks again to eveyone for your help.