It's not clear whether the new unit is IDE or SATA connection. If it's IDE and the ONLY device on the IDE channel, make sure the jumpers are set to Master. It also should be on the END connector of the 80-conductor ribbon cable. Oh yeah, also check that the ribbon cable is plugged in correctly. Usually you can't do this wrong - the connectors themselves have extra bumps and blanked-off pins to prevent doing it wrong. But just to check, the ribbon cable has one edge with a red stripe to identify Pin #1. On the mobo the port connector should have a marking next to it with the number "1", and the cable's red stripe edge must go there. At the hard drive, there also should be a "1" marking near the cable connector, and almost always this will be at the outside edge of the HDD case, not at the center.
Of course, if your drive is SATA, none of this applies.
Now we come to the more likely thing to do. I am assuming that you already have another HDD in the system that is your boot drive, and this new 640 GB WD unit is an additional drive that will just hold data and will NOT be your boot drive. You may have missed an important detail - ANY new drive needs a two-step process done to prepare it for use by Windows. You cannot just plug it in and get it working - if you do, Windows won't see it in My Computer, although it will show up in Disk Manager in the lower right-hand pane as a connected device not ready to use.
The preparation steps are to create on the new drive at least one Partition (the first one on any drive must be the Primary Partition), which defines a space allocated to use as a drive. The second step is to Format this Partition, which establishes on it a File System with all its tracking components. After those two, Windows can use it.
Windows has the tools for these operations in Disk Manager. If you choose to do these yourself this way, Go to Disk Manager and find the new drive in its lower right pane, probably showing its space as Unallocated. RIGHT-click on it and choose to Create a Partition. Make SURE you chose the new 640 GB drive, because what comes next will DESTROY ANY DATA on the drive you choose! This will be a Primary Partition. You can choose how much of the disk to use in this Partition, from all of the disk to any smaller portion. If you don't use all the space, the remaining space will be Unallocated, and you can come back here later and create another Partition in it. If you are not going to boot from this drive, do NOT set it to be a bootable Partition. Let it do its thing, then come back and RIGHT-click on it again. This time choose to Format it. You will have to choose a File System, and most users should pick NTFS for such large drives. Choose either Quick or Full Format. Quick does all the essential stuff like establishing the hidden file structures to track disk space use. Full does that, then runs a test on absolutely every sector of the drive, marking any faulty ones so they never get used. This may not be necessary because few new drives have such problems, and the Full Format will take MANY hours to run. But if you have the time, it's a precaution. When the Format is done, you reboot and find the drive in My Computer ready to use.
There are lots of utility packages that will do both of these jobs for you, typically used as applications you just run under Windows. Just be VERY careful in choosing which drive to operate on - you do not want to wipe out any drives already in use!! You may have WD's free package already, called Data Lifeguard, if your drive came with a CD of utilities. If not, go to their website and download the right version for free.
http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?groupid=0&level1=0&modelno=&lang=en
Make your way through the menus by choosing your drive until you get to selecting which version of Data Lifeguard. If you are just setting up a data-only additional drive (as I assumed) the one for use in Windows is good. A version that sets up its own DOS and runs from there also is available, and they recommend it if you plan to clone an existing boot drive to the new drive so that the new one becomes your boot drive. You download and run the file as specified, then use that software to make you drive setup process easy.
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