Windows doesn't notice second HDD in ultrabay

[greghoward]

I'm running out of disk space (again...), and was thinking of using my old HDD in the ultrabay for extra hot-swappable storage. The CD/DVD drive works fine in the ultrabay, but when I stick the HDD in there, windows doesn't notice it. If I go to "add new hardware", that seems to be just enough of a kick that the drive pops up a second later. (However, rescanning the disks in the disk manager does *not* force it to see the second drive.)

This seems minor, since I can reliably get it to work with "add hardware", but it's a pain, and will make the difference between the second drive being useful or not. Any idea what the problem could be? More generally, what services detect new hardware, and is there a way to make them more vigilant? (Although it appears to detect the CD/DVD just fine.)

thanks,


greg

[bill bolton]

Any idea what the problem could be?

You might want to have a look at the characteristics of the disk volume that is mounted in the Ultrabay using the Disk Management console, and see what it thinks about it.

Maybe delete the volume and create a new one from within the console.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[mgo]

greg

As Bill said, try deleting the partition and creating and formating the drive while it is in Ultra Bay. Windows really likes having its own "home grown" file system on a drive.

Use the quick format option, or it will take eons to format the thing. Works just the same, quick, easy and no unpleasant aftertaste. (tee hee)

[davidspalding]

I also suggest using DISKMGMT.MSC, the Disk Management console to format the partition. Be warned, though, my XP Pro doesn't like to eject a HDD once it's been used ... to stay safe, I have to shut down to EasyEject or Remove Hardware the 2nd HDD.

BTW, if your main system partition is running out of space, look to see how many old System Update folders you've got under C:\drivers and the other IBM folders. Also, look in Windows (with Explorer set to show hidden files), and look how many $NT... folders you've got. Those are all the "back out" or uninstall folders for any Windows updates. The sum could be huge. I remove those to an external drive twice a year, and remove the entries from the Uninstall (for APPWIZ.CPL) section of the Registry. You might also find extraneous or bloated data in c:\Documents and Settings\ either for your user or other, unused users.

Sometimes deleting your user (saving the files and desktop and favorites and Firefox profiles) and creating a new one for yourself leaves behind a lot of cruft in the user Application Data folders, which can then be expunged. ... There are ways to reclaim usable space on the system partition.

HTH....

[greghoward]

Thanks for the great replies. It hadn't occurred to me that Windows would be so touchy as to care whether I'd reformatted the drive, but I'm not too surprised. However, since this drive has the full original Windows/IBM recovery installed on it, it's nice to have as an emergency backup, so I was reluctant to do that.

As for cleaning out the disk, I've started doing some of that, and there's a lot of bloat to be found, although I am a little superstitious about deleting Windows uninstall files so I haven't gone there; total is only about half a gig.

So rather than delete bloat a few hundred mb at a time, I decided to take the ($70) plunge and ordered a new drive to clone, which will give me at least 60gb of free space -- that will keep me going for a couple more years, and then I can reformat the first drive and use it as secondary or for backup.

Thanks again!