How do you get your computer to recognize the internal hard drive?

Answer 1

To make your computer recognize larger hard drives, you can sometimes update the computer's BIOS, but more than likely, you will need to use the "drive overlay" software provided by the hard drive manufacturer. You can also purchase a PCI IDE controller for about $20.00 - $50.00 which will allow your computer to recognize the larger hard drives. These can be purchased from CompUSA, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and just about any store carrying computer upgrades.

Answer 2

The steps of adding an additional hard drive to your computer follows a basic principal known as the master and the slave. Since this is your first time you will have to be very patient and follow these basic rules. Weather you realize it or not this question is followed with more questions. Given the nature of your question I will make two assumptions that 1- Your operating system is Windows either Windows 2000 or Windows XP and not Linux and 2- that you’re installing a hard drive bigger than 100 gigabytes. In the event that you answer yes to both of my assumptions, before attaching your new hard drive to your computer you need to know your existing hard drive and CD or DVD Drive configuration, here’s why. Your primarily hard drive or your C:\ drive will always be your master hard drive any additional devices attached to the hard drive are known as slave devices. A slave device could be an additional hard drive a CD/CD burner or a DVD player. Some PCs may be configured with the CD/DVD/CD Burner as slave devices to the primary/master hard drive. If this is the case you will need to use your computers secondary IDE Hard drive controllers. This also brings another issue if you do have to use the secondary IDE controller you have to go to your computers BIOS to enable it; by default the secondary IDE Controller is disabled. You go to your PC BIOS when first turning on your computer and you see a series of messages and number this is the bios that initializes your computer. If your existing CD/DVD/CD Burner are not attached to your existing primarily hard drive then you will simply attach your second hard drive to your master hard drive and make changes to the little white or black pins on your hard drive known as jumpers to make your new hard drive a slave hard drive. Follow you manufacturer’s directions as to what jumpers to use to make it a slave drive. Second because this is a hard drive bigger than 100 gigabits it comes with software from the manufacturer. You will need this software to help configure your new drive. Before using your hard drive you have to format it with the NTFS file system. Once you finish formatting your hard drive you will notice that Windows will tell you that you have about 80 to 90 gigabytes and not 100 gigabytes don’t worry about this the manufacturer didn’t cheat you it’s because some megabytes are lost when formatting the hard drive I don’t want to get to technical with this one lets just say that that’s the way it is. Also I found a great site that will give you more details with pretty pictures and illustrations. I hope you find my answer helpful, please don’t hesitate to ask me more questions if you run into any issues, have a good one. Alfredo. http://www.mikeshardware.com/howtos/howto_connect_ide_hd.html

Answer 3

You need to have the bios recognize it. Different manufacturers use different bios so you'll need to figure out how to use the one on your computer. Often you enter the bios controls buy using the Escape, F7 or Delete key during startup.

Watch the boot messages as they go past.

Answer 4

Depending on the operating system the hard drive should automativally be reconides and show up in My COmputer as thenext available drive letter.

How are you connectiong to the PC?

Conrad

Answer 5

Fixing this problem is not easy to do, and also requires a great deal of information and what computer you are using. It is easiest just to take it to a computer repair center.

Answer 6

Check that all cables are properly connected.

Check if the drive has the proper jumper settings.

Answer 7

If you are using a Microsoft computer, click on start in the lower left corner and then click on devices and printers. You should be able to access your USB drive from there.