Vista doesn't recognise 2nd SATA Hard DriveSolved/Closed

Question

Hello,

I recently had a hard disk failure so re-installed Vista on what was my secondary drive.

I then purchased a Hitachi 500g SATA drive.  Unfortunately Vista will not recognise the drive.  It doesn't show up in Disk Management.  At times it will show in BIOS but not always, and even then it doesn't show in Vista.

Anyone any ideas?

Many thanks,

Phil

inkslinger13 · Accepted Answer

Windows 7 users:   Start-->right click Computer-->Manage-->Storage-->Disk Management.  My second hard drive (both 1TB Western Digitals) was listed as offline. Right click the disc number (mine was Disc 3) and select online.  You should be good to go - it worked for me!

Death Metal Moe · Answer

Just wanted to confirm that the above advice got my 2nd unrecognized SATA drive to be seen as well.  Thank you.

alembic · Answer

symbiot thanks a lot.  thats exactly what was needed.  Vista has some oddities that I just dont understand why they changed things the way they did, but they still all function...mostly

NYTransplant · Answer

Thanks so much for this solution.  I lucked onto this thread right away, so there was not much pain as compared to some of the rest of you.

Thanks again for saving me HOURS!

Introspektive · Answer

Inkslinger's tip was exactly what I needed. After fiddling with my bios with no result, All I had to do was assign a drive letter and it showed up in my computer. Perfect.

Jimmy · Answer

I hads the same problem upgrading from Windows 7 Build 7000 to 7100. 

control panel -> Administrative Tools - > Computer Management 
in there choose ' storage' => 'disk management' 
I then assigned my Drive D the drive letter "D" and all is ok

bob · Answer

as explaned in no:3 everything works great,and if you have a new empty that your computer will not recignise ,right click open volume to let your computersee how much space it has and folow the wizard.hope this helps.GOOD LUCK AND BE PATIENT.

brandon · Answer

Thanks again for this post - saved me hours.

jman · Answer

Worked perfectly I couldn't figure out whether it wasn't getting power or something was wrong and I should return the HD Gald I tried this

mands · Answer

worked perfect

Lazza · Answer

Thank you! It has taken me ages to figure this out. I had a SATA hard disk with data on it. Ran it externally with a Vantec NexStar CX and it was not being recognised. The disk manager showed it as "Disk 1" Dynamic with the exclamation mark. The right click and import drive did the trick. AaaH! So easy. :)

tafnz · Answer

cheers symbiot I followed ur advice and it works perfectly ,just as well we got people like u to help us novices lol,cheers

ocman · Answer

Great help. Thanks.

DJBrisDman · Answer

it seems that your hard drive is in a different formats if you goto start - right click my computer and click properties - then click device manager , goto disk drives and see if you see your harddrive that you installed if so that means vista know its plug in but the problem is in a different format besides , exfat , fat , fat 32, or NTFS   


my solution is find a program that will detect the hard drive and format it 
or  use Linux or mac to format to the types of format that windows can read

Vista doesn't recognise 2nd SATA Hard Drive

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