Where did the new HDD's go?

[Keygrip]

Home build - Vista Ultimate, Asus M2N-Sli Deluxe Motherboard. Few other bits that probably don't matter - but they are in there.

Original build included 2 x 500Gb HDD's. On power up for first time, computer found both drives and told me they were there.

Meddling about, as you do, I found that the tower has an adaptor that is designed to hold four HDD's - so I decided to add two more - for no other reason than "because I can".

Screwed them in, connected them up, turned on the machine....nothing. Not a sight nor sound of them.

Drive C is SATA 1 (500Gb HDD), D is SATA 2 (an, asyet unused, 500 HDD), E is SATA 3 - a Philips DVD Duner. F is SATA 4 - another DVD burner.

The two new ones were plugged as SATA 5 and 6. When I solve this conundrum, the next trick will be to install an EIDE drive that is full of documents and used to run on XP Pro in another tower.

Any thoughts?

[Bushfiva]

Formatted 'em yet? CP - Admin Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management, from memory. May be slightly different or, indeed, way different on Vista.

Quick thought: high SATA numbers. Are these on a separate card? Have you seen that card working yet?

[green granite]

On my (Asus) MB I have to enable each SATA port individually from the BIOS, it is not automatic. Otherwise no idea

[Parapunter]

You can do this in windoze too. Right click on my computer, select manage then go to disk management. In there, they should show up if they're connected correctly & you can choose to enable them as required.

'Should' is a well used word in computing I reckon...

[Keygrip]

Thank you, cats and kittens - I'll get to those tricks in an hour or four after attending to some items on my wife's "Honey do" list.

The motherboard has six SATA sockets on the board, and two on the back panel - and it came with six SATA cables to plug into them. The case advertises itself as being able to carry up to 12 HDD's - and there certainly are sufficient power cables dangling from the power supply.

The first four "devices" were instantly recognised and configured by the power up - but attempts to install the OS onto either of the HDD's were declined until I had formatted them.

[Keygrip]

Bushfiva - your memory serves you perfectly.

There they are - Disc 0 shows as C drive and says "Healthy (System Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partion)" 465.76GB NTFS.

Disc 1 shows as D drive. "Healthy. (Primary Partition)" 465.76GB NTFS

Both show as "Online"

Disc 2 and 3 show as Online. 465.76GB "Unallocated"

Disc 4 to 7 (Drive G, H, J, F) show as "Removable. No media"

CD-ROM 0 shows as "DVD E" and CD-ROM 1 shows as "DVD F".

I'll get there.

Thanks.

(Goes off to look for a button that has "Allocate" written on it.)

[Bushfiva]

Goes off to look for a button that has "Allocate" written on it

Right click and format while you're in that window?

[Keygrip]

Thankees, Bushfiva - my computer now has 2 terror bites of disk sapce (or is it disc space?).

I had another battle when I clicked to format as it gave me options. I don't like options - 'cause you need to know what they mean.

Thanks again - all works.

[Keygrip]

Hmm, took a slight step backward - added the IDE drive.

Gave it power, plugged its ribbon cable into the relevant socket - didn't move the jumper on the back of it (so it's still in "Master" mode for IDE).

Machine doesn't seem to recognise it at all.

I *have* looked at the manual - I see no signs of anything being disabled by default, or requiring a tweak.

I've got another one to do soon - wife's computer will have new mobo (same model), proc, video card, RAM....but keep the same HDD.

I did wonder about "copying" the old HDD to a new SATA one - but not aware as to "how".

[jimtherev]

If you have - or can borrow - an external HDD caddy which connects to USB, then copying should be a super-easy job.

Keep up the good fight!
Jim

[Jhieminga]

The question is whether your board allows simultaneous use of both IDE and SATA drives. Mine does, but according to the manual only certain combinations work and I need to enable this in the BIOS. So my suggestion is to go through the manual of the motherboard for this one.

Otherwise a USB caddy will enable copying (and leave you with a nice mobile drive).

[gizmocat]

Or swap the cables from the CD drive "master". If it can see the CD drives, then it should see the HDD on the same bus.

[Keygrip]

A couple more options to try - but I *have* read the manual (specifically for this).

The CD Drives (DVD burners actually) are both SATA - cable won't fit without a sharp knife and a lot of pushing hard.

[gizmocat]

Sorry mate, I missed that :oh: