Installing my new hard drvie

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Guest

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I recently got a shiny new IBM hard drive (ATA 100 60 gig), and installed it. Mr problem is: windows recognizes it in the device manager as a generic type 47 hard drive, bt won't assign it a drive letter, and it won't show up in my computer. I have no way of formatting the thing, basically. What do I do? Help!!

If it matters, I've got an ASUS A7V VIA Kt-133 mainboard, another hard drive from Maxtor already installed, and 2 cd-roms. Thanks!
 

Spdy_Gonzales

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Mar 9, 2001
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I think you need to run fdisk to creat a dos partition and then format. You will need a win startup disk to do this.

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Arrow

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How come you have no way of formatting it? Just use a Win98 Startup disk. Make sure it's being recognized properly in your BIOS.

Rob
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hammerhead

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Mar 5, 2001
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As spdy says, you need to create a valid FAT partion before Windows will assign it a drive letter.

The usual way with Win 9x is to boot from a Win Startup floppy, to command prompt, and run FDISK.

Without a floppy, you can hit F8 after the POST, choose 'command prompt only', and run FDISK from there (it should be in C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND)

Some drives come with their own software on floppy to prep the disk prior to formatting.

FDISK can seem a little intimidating if you haven't used it before.
 
I'm not sure if you need to actually create a partition, so much as simply set an active partition. (option 2 in Fdisk)

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Krovax

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May 27, 2001
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Just run Fdisk and make an extended DOS partition (you can only have one principal partition. You d'ont need to make it active. An active partition will only tell the operating system where are the file to correctly start up. After that you have to format the drive (in Dos or in Windows).

If you have other trouble with it make sure your new hard drive is master or slave by reading the little guide that come with the hard drive and by setting. You have one master and one slave by IDE cable.

Please correct me if I am wrong, and I hope that I have help you.
 

hollett

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As device manager is seeing the drive as type 47 then the bios has seen the drive.
What you need to do now is start windows and run Start>Programs>MS-Dos Prompt.
At the dos Prompt (c:\windows) type 'fdisk' and hit return.
You will be asked if you want to use fat 32 enter 'Y' and hit return.
you will now have a screen with 5 options select option 5 (Select disk).
You sould now see 2 disks listed select the new drive (probable drive 2).
You sould now be back at the main screen select option 1 (create dos partition).
You will now have 3 options select option 2 (create extended partition) and use the maximum size.
When this is done you will return back to the main menu, select option 1 again and from the 3 choces select option 3 (create logical drive).
The computer will ask you a few questions if you only want to use the drive as 1 letter (eg 60Gb d: drive) then use 100% on one drive.
After this has been completed exit Fdisk and reboot your computer.
When windows starts up again you will now have your hard drive showing up in 'My Computer' Format the drive and start filling it up.
Good luck.

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Only those who prosper can judge what is sane.
 
G

Guest

Guest
please use ibm's utility entitled Disk Manager 2000 which can be found here http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm

This utility simplifies installing your hard drive. It's very easy to use. it will take u through everything. And as for the it showing up as generic, try installing drivers which allow ata 100. With my intel i downloaded the ata storage driver which enabled UDMA 5 and showed up as IBM under disk drives. I am sure via has something similar.. Hope this helps

--Verbal