Hard disk Dilemmas!

[greenjm90]

I bought a new Dell PC because my old one was slow. My plan was to put my old IDE Hard-drive in this computer and run from that. I also need the extra space though on the new SATA Hard drive, however Windows on the IDE Hard drive wont see it in Windows Expolorer (or anywhere else.) Is there Drivers i can download or any other way in which i can get to see the SATA drive.

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[sabashuali]

Hi

Yes there is a way to install SATA drivers (which unfortunately are not included in the windows installation media) and use SATA drives.

However, we will need a bit more information:
Your system details and also the windows version.

In the meantime, on the side or back of your PC you should see a service tag (normaly a five figure string i.e. AAAAA or A1B2C3 etc.).

Type the string in here - http://support.euro.dell.com/support/index.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs

and choose the 'drivers and downloads' option from the 'Select a tool' menu.
The SATA drivers might be available there.

Good luck.

 

[Big B]

I'd check Device Manager first and see if the SATA drivers were already installed first.

After that, the hard drive will need to be formatted for it to be seen in 'My Computer' alongside your other drives. Here's how:

Right-click on My Computer. Go to Manage. Go to Disk Management (towards the bottom). Here you will see your drives, formatted and unformatted ones. Right-click on the unformatted one, and select Format from the menu. Follow the wizard through the formatting procedure. I suggest using the NTFS filesystem over FAT32, as it's designed to handle larger hard drive better (over 32GB).