new ultrabay hdd not showing in 'my computer'

[teepee]

hi

i've just fitted a new 160gb hdd into a new ultrabay hdd cradle and inserted same into my t42. i then got the bubbles 'new hardware found', 'samsung.... found' and so on, so windows has found the ultrabay and hdd. but i don't see the drive letter in 'my computer'. i rebooted to see if this was the issue. it isn't.

i've looked at device manager and it is showing both hdds.

and i've searched the forums here, but no luck (too many alternative words to choose from i guess )

so, any ideas please?

[sjthinkpader]

The new HDD has to be partitioned and formatted to show up.

[dsvochak]

Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management->Right click on disk and format.

[RealBlackStuff]

If it is a new hard disk, it will need to be "initialized" first!
(Same management panel)

[teepee]

Many thanks for the quick replies and details one and all .

An odd thing though is that just 10 minutes after I posted the comment below I stumbled across the disk management thingy, and figured out the initialisation and partition etc. Posted a reply, but doesn't seem to be here. I must be having a bad day .

In the comment I thought I'd posted I asked whether my choice was the right one. Went with all the default settings - NTFS, 8Mb, single partition etc - but also disabled write caching or some such to safeguard data in the event of a power failure etc. Does this sound good please?

[yak]

The exact same question has been asked here a couple of days ago:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 85&start=0

[jamnkats]

thanks for asking this question - having almost the same problem in my new T43 (except it doesn't show up at all that I can tell). Off to check these utilities.

[alexmoss]

I had exactly the same problem and these directions fixed it. Thanks!

[fredstev]

Out of curiosity, exactly what does the "initialization" step actually do?

Fred

[RealBlackStuff]

AFAIK it preps a factory-fresh hard disk for normal use, by (re-)writing the meta-data, what we commonly call the "partition table".
Without it, there's no way to find out where your data are on a hard disk.

[fredstev]

AFAIK it preps a factory-fresh hard disk for normal use, by (re-)writing the meta-data, what we commonly call the "partition table".
Without it, there's no way to find out where your data are on a hard disk.

That sounds a lot like what Fdisk did. Maybe that's why I can't seem to find that utility any more.
Fred

[RealBlackStuff]

FDISK partitions a disk. The pgm itself needs the partition table for it to work. It marks entries in there with partition size/type/etc.

[fredstev]

FDISK partitions a disk. The pgm itself needs the partition table for it to work. It marks entries in there with partition size/type/etc.

I see. Thank you. I've always been a little hazy on exactly what order of events needs to happen when dealing with a new (or re-used) drive. Usually involved me muddling around until achieving the needed results for creating a bootable drive. This may explain the difficulty I had reformatting a apple TV drive for use in this X31. Acronis disk director simply didn't know what it was looking at when asked to "Format as a primary, active partition".

Looks like I've a little homework to do.

Fred