Question

Why aren't my drives recognized?

Asked by: Need-a-Clue

I pulled two IDE drives from a 9 year old Gateway.
 
One is a Western Digital Spartan 136AA dated 7 Apr 2000
One is a Quantum Fireball Plus KK  20.5 AT
 
I connect to my Dell Vostro 1500 Laptop via a known good IDE/USB adaptor, as I have done many times before. Operating System XP Service Pack II
 
Both drives act the same. They are recognized and reported as working properly in Device Manager, and Control-Panel-Add Hardware. The speed program HD TACH recognizes and reports the read speeds.
 
BUT: Neither shows up in "My Computer" ???
 
I figure I must be omitting SOME step. Any clues Experts?

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Asked On
2009-11-01 at 12:56:51ID24862268
Tags

IDE DRIVES TEST WORKING

,

BUT COMPUTER DOES NOT RECOGNIZE

Topics

General Computer Systems

,

Personal Computers

,

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
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Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: MidnightOnePosted on 2009-11-01 at 13:14:43ID: 25715516

Open up the computer management console go down to Disk Management. See if either drive has a drive letter assigned.

 

by: hkunnanaPosted on 2009-11-01 at 13:19:07ID: 25715528

I guess either these drives have no partitions defined, or had some partitions that windows couldn't mount as driver letters.
Try :
Right click on "my computer" > Manage > Disk Management
and see if the drives are there. If they are seen by the computer, (and if you don't need any of its contents if any), try to creat a new partition or if there is a partition already, try to assign a drive letter to it.

 

by: MarkMichaelPosted on 2009-11-01 at 13:50:20ID: 25715729

Agreed, computer management. Disk Management is where its at. You need to assign a drive letter to these drives.

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-11-01 at 14:48:53ID: 25715997

Possibly you could need to initialize them in Windows Disk Management and then assign drive letters as suggested above.

 

by: Need-a-CluePosted on 2009-11-01 at 15:43:18ID: 31648626

Thqnks all! Formatting the drives solved the problemo.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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