Hey guys. Ok, I know this topic is everywhere, but I can't seem to find a proper answer to it. I have a Seagate 1TB HDD installed with windows 8 running on it and I had a spare 500GB WD HDD lying around. So I hooked it up to my SATA 3 port, I believe. It is detected in BIOS, but when I try to log into Windows, it takes a lot of time and I don't think it logs in. So I force shutdown my PC using Power button.
I had a Windows 7 DVD, so I removed the Seagate HDD and booted up into the DVD, it took so much time and finally I was able to get to the installer, where I selected custom and was able to find my WD HDD. I was using this drive in a different PC before, so there were 3 partitions there. I selected each one of them and I deleted, which also took quite a while. and then there was 4** GB Unallocated space, which I selected new and then formatted the drive and quit the installer. I hooked up Seagate and restarted, and was able to log into Windows pretty fast (the usual speed). At this HDD was still recognized in BIOS.
Then I opened "This PC" and was still not able to find the HDD. I have searched in Disk Management, did diskpart in cmd and also checked in device manager, all I can see is the Seagate HDD. So after all of attempt I still can't see my WD HDD in Windows.
My Specs: Intel i5 3570 3.7Ghz Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D2V Motherboard Sapphire HD 7970 GHZ Edition GPU Huntkey 600W Bronze Certified (I Believe) Kingston Hyper X Blu 8GB RAM
If I missed something please do ask. Thanks for taking your time in reading this. I may be making a silly mistake, IDK. I am open to suggestions. Thank You!!
It may have deleted the partitions and not formatted the drive because you quit the installer. I'm not sure how Windows 7's DVD does that, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.
I would get a Linux live CD with the popular "Gparted" partition manager on it, and see if that detects it. If so, format it to NTFS so Windows can read it, and then you should be able to deal with it under Windows. The reason I say use Linux is because Linux can read more kinds of filesystems than Windows, so if it somehow got formatted to a weird proprietary filesystem somehow, or if it's corrupt, Linux is more likely to be able to read it.
I will give "Gparted" a try. Should I install linux or run it using virtual machine or something. I don't know much about linux, so I will try to do some research. Thanks for the response anyway!
Yeah, I have tried both of them as well before creating this thread. None of them worked, but my HDD is recognized in BIOS as well as Windows 7 Installation. But yeah, I think "Gparted" is my last resort. When I try them I will get back you people, but till then Thanks for all the help. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to say it.
You won't have to install it. If you make a Linux Live CD (just burn the ISO to a DVD or a USB stick) then when you boot from that (the same way you boot a Windows disk) you'll have given the option to "Try Ubuntu without touching your computer" or something like that. It can boot the entire OS off the CD, which will allow you to use gparted to fix your HDD without having to install anything extra.
Hey, yeah I am sorry about that, I was kinda busy at the time, so I tried it later but forgot to come back to the forums. About the HDD, sorry bro, I think you are out of luck. I tried couple of times, GParted recognizes the HDD, but even if I format to NTFS, it still doesn't work. So yeah, now that HDD is in the dust. I am sorry, I hope I could help you out, but I guess that's not the case. Best of luck. Hope you find a solution. If you do try and let me know. I still have the HDD, I just don't use it.
Yeah I did find a solution I'm not sure if its the best. Basically what I did was plug it into a different sata port and it automatically was recognized and had a drive letter assigned sounds odd but worked.
The reason why I said it's not the best is because if I decide to get another drive in the future which I am planning on doing I have no idea if that sata port will work but give it a go if you just need that drive working, hope it helps.