No drive letters when using Ultraslim adapter with HD's

[laserjock]

I have three 2.5 inch, 4200 RPM IDE Hitachi hard drives sitting around which I decided to try to use with my Lenovo ThinkPad Second HDD Adapter For Ultrabay Slim (PN 62P4553). I have a T41P ThinkPad.

Maybe all three drives are bad (I don't know their status, hence I'm trying to use them) but when I put the slim adapter with the HD into the slot I do not see any new drive letters in Windows. I get a "new hardware found" notification but that's it.

Are the hard drives just bad and can't be read, hence no drive letter, or am I missing a certain software driver or some such?

Any help is appreciated.

[darkwish]

Are they drives new? Can you see them in drive management?

They will need to be partitioned and formated in drive management before windows will assign a drive letter to them.

[richk]

Maybe they're aren't partitioned or formatted.

[bill bolton]

do not see any new drive letters in Windows. I get a "new hardware found" notification but that's it.

You should check in the "Disk Management" section of the Windows "Computer Management" tool to see if the drive is "active". If its not active it wont show a drive letter.

Read the help in Disk Management to see what your options are.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[laserjock]

Thanks for the suggestion everyone - Disk management, duh! It has been a while since I had to format drives, and I'm so used to USB solid-state memory drives being already initialized and assigned a drive letter in Explorer when you plug them in.

Again, thx all.