Hard drive install - please help.

[snyper77]

I just added a 500GB HD as a slave to a 180GB master. Everything boots up fine, but when I click on "MY COMPUTER" to view all drives, the 500GB isn't listed. But when I go into the BIOS, it's there, and Primary Drive 1. I highlighted it and hit ENTER, and it said "Auto 500GB". So the BIOS sees it, but windows XP doesn't. Can someone please help?

[Alexajlex]

The dive does not have a partition on it

[Alexajlex]

Right click on MyComputer one your desktop and go to Manage

then go to Disk Management on the left

right-click on the new drive (on the right) and choose create new partition

[snyper77]

It worked! You are a LIFE SAVER!
One last thing... I'd like to change my drive letters on my partitions, but it says "this may cause programs to no longer run".... well I surely don't want to have to reinstall all my programs. Am I stuck with my drive letters being C: F: G: and H? (all programs are installed on G) and I wanted to move the last 3 partitions to D, E, and F. But if it's gonna screw up my program installs on G, I can't do it. :(

[GilesGuthrie]

You can always change it back! But if you have apps installed on the G: partition, I would not recommend moving it.

[TTk]

Follow Alexajlex's manage drive reply and your done.. Right click each drive and rename as required drive letter will stay so O/S can find..

[Jon]

Bear in mind that your CD/DVD drive is probably currently D: and if you change all the other drives around, any currently-installed software will continue to look for the installation or data CD in the D: drive.

[silverhalide]

You can always change it back! But if you have apps installed on the G: partition, I would not recommend moving it.

No you can't, not if you rename your system drive, your windows drive ("\windows" or "\winnt") or the drive where "program files" is located -- if you do any of those, you may not be able to boot or be able to run a program that will let you change them back.

Renaming drives which only contain data shouldn't be a problem, although you programs may complain about searching for data files until you redirect them.

(Sweeping generalizations made to prevent people from getting in over their head -- if you think you see errors in my statements, then you go ahead and do it, you either know enough to get out of trouble or will be forced to learn quickly)

[jonnythan]

You probably don't want to change the letter of your DVD/CD drive. And you can't change the letter of your Windows drive.

Change the others as you see fit, assuming you have not installed applications onto them. Just remember that any programs you have set up to use a directory on one of those drives will need to be changed as well.