why are my disc drives wonky?
October 13, 2008 4:12 AM Subscribe
My slave drive doesn't show up at all, and windows seems to think my primary drive has only 127 GB when it should have 500!
My primary drive, which is connected to SATA1 on the motherboard, shows up in BIOS as 500.1 GB but only 127 when I view its properties in windows. Meanwhile, my secondary slave drive, which is connected to the IDE connector (on the same ribbon cable as the disc drive), isn't detected at all.
I suppose the jumpers could have been set wrong. But that still couldn't explain the problem with my primary drive.
As you might have guessed, I've never set up a brand-new computer before, so it's possible the drives haven't been installed right. Is it necessary to install them before windows?
Thanks in advance, MeFi Tech Support!
My primary drive, which is connected to SATA1 on the motherboard, shows up in BIOS as 500.1 GB but only 127 when I view its properties in windows. Meanwhile, my secondary slave drive, which is connected to the IDE connector (on the same ribbon cable as the disc drive), isn't detected at all.
I suppose the jumpers could have been set wrong. But that still couldn't explain the problem with my primary drive.
As you might have guessed, I've never set up a brand-new computer before, so it's possible the drives haven't been installed right. Is it necessary to install them before windows?
Thanks in advance, MeFi Tech Support!
Response by poster: oh, that was a bad sentence, sorry. I didn't install windows before putting my hardware in, if that's what you're thinking! I meant to ask:
Is it necessary to install the drivers for hardware before installing windows?
I have a MSI k9N SLI V2 motherboard, an AMD CPU, 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM and an 8800 GTS graphics card. These all should be compatible.
My new 500 gig hard drive is a Samsung HD50; I don't know what the old one is.
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:27 AM on October 13, 2008
Is it necessary to install the drivers for hardware before installing windows?
I have a MSI k9N SLI V2 motherboard, an AMD CPU, 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM and an 8800 GTS graphics card. These all should be compatible.
My new 500 gig hard drive is a Samsung HD50; I don't know what the old one is.
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:27 AM on October 13, 2008
If the BIOS shows 500 GB, the hardware is most likely configured correctly (for size anyway) and this is an OS issue. What OS do you have running (including service packs)?
posted by masher at 6:06 AM on October 13, 2008
posted by masher at 6:06 AM on October 13, 2008
OS? XP requires SP1, and Win2k requires SP3, before being able to see drives > 127G. Yes, this goes for SATA drives too, not just IDE.
Failing that: is the BIOS set up for LBA on that drive? I assume it is but, given the other limited info, it occurred to me that you may be reporting the drive ID from the inital BIOS scan.
It's also possible that it came pre-formatted with a default 127G partition; have a look in disk management to see if there's any unallocated space on the drive.
As for your 2nd drive: "on the same ribbon cable as the disc drive" - I assume you mean "on the same ribbon as the DVD drive". Check that it's master/slave setting is correct (i.e. not clashing with the other drive on the same cable), and that it also is enabled in the BIOS.
posted by Pinback at 6:22 AM on October 13, 2008
Failing that: is the BIOS set up for LBA on that drive? I assume it is but, given the other limited info, it occurred to me that you may be reporting the drive ID from the inital BIOS scan.
It's also possible that it came pre-formatted with a default 127G partition; have a look in disk management to see if there's any unallocated space on the drive.
As for your 2nd drive: "on the same ribbon cable as the disc drive" - I assume you mean "on the same ribbon as the DVD drive". Check that it's master/slave setting is correct (i.e. not clashing with the other drive on the same cable), and that it also is enabled in the BIOS.
posted by Pinback at 6:22 AM on October 13, 2008
There are two possibilities that I see here.
1) Did you just clone your old drive onto the new one? If so your new, larger drive is probably just not formatted as the size it needs to be - only a portion of the disk is being used. Open up computer management console (assuming Win XP, right-click on My Computer, select "Manage") and open the Disk Management section. Your installed, detected hard drives will be listed here; you should be able to see graphically how much of each disk is being used, and how big each partition is. Odds are your new, large disk is detected as a large drive, but is broken into one small partition that shows up as C:, and a large, unformatted section that won't show up as it hasn't been initialized as active space yet.
If that is the case, you'll need to reformat the drive; you want to do a nondestructive resize if you can (adding the unused space to the active section, without deleting what you have on the disk already).
2) You installed a SATA disk. If this is Win XP, there are no SATA drivers unless you installed them during Windows setup. In that case, Windows will ignore the SATA drive (even if the BIOS detects it) and will use the drive on the IDE cable as your primary (and only) drive. In computer management console, click on the Device Manager section, then expand the "Disk drives" section. Do you see one, or both drives listed? If only one, is it the small one on the IDE channel, or the new SATA drive? Do you see a section labeled "SCSI and RAID controllers"? That's where a SATA driver should be listed, if present; if you don't see one, WIndows may not have detected your new drive.
For a fresh Windows install onto a SATA drive, you need to have the SATA drivers supplied by your drive manufacturer on a floppy (yes, a damn, old-school, ancient technology floppy disk!) and tell Windows Setup that you need to add "Third party or RAID drivers" when prompted during setup. Last time I did this, I was ticked, as the only functional floppy drive I had anywhere in my house happened to be on the computer I was trying to install Windows on... a USB floppy should work in a pinch, otherwise good luck. If no floppy you'll need to build a custom WinXP install disk using nLite to integrate the SATA drivers into the bootable install disk.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:50 AM on October 13, 2008
1) Did you just clone your old drive onto the new one? If so your new, larger drive is probably just not formatted as the size it needs to be - only a portion of the disk is being used. Open up computer management console (assuming Win XP, right-click on My Computer, select "Manage") and open the Disk Management section. Your installed, detected hard drives will be listed here; you should be able to see graphically how much of each disk is being used, and how big each partition is. Odds are your new, large disk is detected as a large drive, but is broken into one small partition that shows up as C:, and a large, unformatted section that won't show up as it hasn't been initialized as active space yet.
If that is the case, you'll need to reformat the drive; you want to do a nondestructive resize if you can (adding the unused space to the active section, without deleting what you have on the disk already).
2) You installed a SATA disk. If this is Win XP, there are no SATA drivers unless you installed them during Windows setup. In that case, Windows will ignore the SATA drive (even if the BIOS detects it) and will use the drive on the IDE cable as your primary (and only) drive. In computer management console, click on the Device Manager section, then expand the "Disk drives" section. Do you see one, or both drives listed? If only one, is it the small one on the IDE channel, or the new SATA drive? Do you see a section labeled "SCSI and RAID controllers"? That's where a SATA driver should be listed, if present; if you don't see one, WIndows may not have detected your new drive.
For a fresh Windows install onto a SATA drive, you need to have the SATA drivers supplied by your drive manufacturer on a floppy (yes, a damn, old-school, ancient technology floppy disk!) and tell Windows Setup that you need to add "Third party or RAID drivers" when prompted during setup. Last time I did this, I was ticked, as the only functional floppy drive I had anywhere in my house happened to be on the computer I was trying to install Windows on... a USB floppy should work in a pinch, otherwise good luck. If no floppy you'll need to build a custom WinXP install disk using nLite to integrate the SATA drivers into the bootable install disk.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:50 AM on October 13, 2008
Response by poster: I took the jumper off the second hard disc and now it's reading just fine, I had it as a slave to the dvd drive.
I'm using windows XP (I should have said that right off the bat, sorry), and I'm not exactly sure what is meant by disc management. Are you referring to the "standard cmos features" part of BIOS?
How do I check to see if there's a partition? I have a vague memory of accidentally setting up an 8 mb partition by mistake when I was first booting up and installing windows, although I know i exited the screen without saving changes. Do you normally partition a drive when you set up windows, or is that something you do in BIOS?
Explain as you would a child.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:05 AM on October 13, 2008
I'm using windows XP (I should have said that right off the bat, sorry), and I'm not exactly sure what is meant by disc management. Are you referring to the "standard cmos features" part of BIOS?
How do I check to see if there's a partition? I have a vague memory of accidentally setting up an 8 mb partition by mistake when I was first booting up and installing windows, although I know i exited the screen without saving changes. Do you normally partition a drive when you set up windows, or is that something you do in BIOS?
Explain as you would a child.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:05 AM on October 13, 2008
Best answer: To recap: The first problem, of not seeing my old drive, has been solved by taking the jumper off and make it the master over the dvd drive.
The second problem still remains, the mystery of the missing gigabytes.
From what Pinback said I take it windows might not have read my new drive right (500 gigs would have sounded crazy when XP came out, I suppose). I just downloaded SP1 for XP, but the problem persists. I'm thinking I might have to find a way to re-introduce windows to the hard disc, to make it change its first impression.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:14 AM on October 13, 2008
The second problem still remains, the mystery of the missing gigabytes.
From what Pinback said I take it windows might not have read my new drive right (500 gigs would have sounded crazy when XP came out, I suppose). I just downloaded SP1 for XP, but the problem persists. I'm thinking I might have to find a way to re-introduce windows to the hard disc, to make it change its first impression.
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:14 AM on October 13, 2008
Right-click on My Computer, choose "Manage" from the pop-up.
You will get a window that has a tree view of options on the left, similar to the folders you can see in Windows Explorer. Click the entry near the bottom that says "Disk Management" and the right side of the window should show you a list of the drives detected by Windows.
My guess here is that you are dealing with missing SATA drivers. If you had two drives in when you installed Windows - one IDE, with the flat ribbon cable, and one SATA with the thin cable - your Windows disk only recognized the IDE drive and set it up as the primary. This would be wrong IF you are now seeing both hard drives in Windows. In that case, you will need to resize your main drive to take advantage of the space Windows is not using. A non-destructive resize is best unless you are willing to lose everything and reinstall from scratch - in which case you will need a floppy with the SATA drivers, and will need to tell Windows that you have third-party drivers during the install (prompt at the bottom of the install screen will say something like "Press F6 if you need to install 3rd party drivers", when you do so it will ask you to insert the driver disk).
Also, don't stop at SP1. Go up to SP3. Things will (generally) work better and be more secure if all the patches and updates are applied.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:14 PM on October 13, 2008
You will get a window that has a tree view of options on the left, similar to the folders you can see in Windows Explorer. Click the entry near the bottom that says "Disk Management" and the right side of the window should show you a list of the drives detected by Windows.
My guess here is that you are dealing with missing SATA drivers. If you had two drives in when you installed Windows - one IDE, with the flat ribbon cable, and one SATA with the thin cable - your Windows disk only recognized the IDE drive and set it up as the primary. This would be wrong IF you are now seeing both hard drives in Windows. In that case, you will need to resize your main drive to take advantage of the space Windows is not using. A non-destructive resize is best unless you are willing to lose everything and reinstall from scratch - in which case you will need a floppy with the SATA drivers, and will need to tell Windows that you have third-party drivers during the install (prompt at the bottom of the install screen will say something like "Press F6 if you need to install 3rd party drivers", when you do so it will ask you to insert the driver disk).
Also, don't stop at SP1. Go up to SP3. Things will (generally) work better and be more secure if all the patches and updates are applied.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:14 PM on October 13, 2008
Windows XP has issues with being able to -format- a drive larger than 127GB, but no real issues with seeing one. I've had that problem a few times when setting up new machines; my standard fix is to *cough*obtain*cough* a copy of Symantec/Norton Partition Magic, and use its "resize partition" feature. Just tell it you want -all- of that unformatted space to be part of your main partition, thankyouverymuch, and it'll do the rest. Others may be able to recommend a free alternative; if so, I'd love to hear it too.
The "Disk Management" feature people are talking about can be found here:
Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management.
It'll tell you basic stats about your drive. As a for instance, my work computer right now says I have a Healthy 39MB FAT (which is normal), a 71.2GB NTFS system partition (Sounds about right), and a 3.6GB "Unknown" partition. You're going to see a 300something GB "unknown" partition, or 300something GB of "unpartitioned space" lying around to the right of your 127GB partition.
You will notice some of your disk size disappears no matter what you do to resize your partition, but that's not the main problem here.
posted by Phineas Rhyne at 12:17 PM on October 13, 2008
The "Disk Management" feature people are talking about can be found here:
Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management.
It'll tell you basic stats about your drive. As a for instance, my work computer right now says I have a Healthy 39MB FAT (which is normal), a 71.2GB NTFS system partition (Sounds about right), and a 3.6GB "Unknown" partition. You're going to see a 300something GB "unknown" partition, or 300something GB of "unpartitioned space" lying around to the right of your 127GB partition.
You will notice some of your disk size disappears no matter what you do to resize your partition, but that's not the main problem here.
posted by Phineas Rhyne at 12:17 PM on October 13, 2008
Response by poster: No, I'm afraid I don't see any partition in the drive... just 127 GB. Could it be a dud?
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:04 PM on October 13, 2008
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:04 PM on October 13, 2008
Best answer: Well, my copy of windows XP was bad, and upon installing a new copy I saw that I had left the rest of the space unpartitioned--although I don't remember doing that. But I formatted the remaining space and now have two partitions for data and a third for the OS.
Everything is working, the two problems are solved. I'm not sure if I fixed them myself or not, but at any rate reading this thread helped me to be more informed, so thanks, everyone.
posted by Citizen Premier at 2:44 AM on October 14, 2008
Everything is working, the two problems are solved. I'm not sure if I fixed them myself or not, but at any rate reading this thread helped me to be more informed, so thanks, everyone.
posted by Citizen Premier at 2:44 AM on October 14, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
You know, I've been thinking about this question for the last ten minutes, and still I have absolutely no idea what you're asking here.
What were the parts you started with in order to set up this brand new computer, and what was your setup procedure?
posted by flabdablet at 5:18 AM on October 13, 2008