I bought a hard drive from new egg, it was pretty cheap and refurbished and the specs on the hard drive are crappy, but to RMA it would make no sense financially so maybe you guys can help. So i plug it in both in sata and in the power. And then i go to disk management and it never shows up, i have tried multiple sata cables, tried all the sata ports, connected this hard drive as the only hard drive on the system. Changed sata power cables from my corsair modular PSU, and i have tried both slots on the psu to power the drive, Nothing, maybe there is a tiny thing i missed? Thank you.
Have you tried booting from a Linux Live Cd and seeing if Linux sees the drive?
Linux is the answer to everything in these forums isint it, no i have not. What does doing so entail?
Put a Linux OS on a USB and boot it up. As root (youll already be root using sysrescuecd) run fdisk -l see if your disk appears.
- if it does appear (it will show as /dev/sdX with some details) yay move to 3
if it doesnt appear and your sure its pluged in, its likely fried. RMA it (shouldn't that be free for faulty hardware?)
It shows up YAY. reformat it using mkfs as its probably a broken file system.
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mkfs.ntfs -L "disk name" /dev/sdXWhere /dev/sdX is the device location for example, fdisk will show your available disks labled /dev/sda /dev/sdb etc for each physical disk.
Reboot and see if it shows up in Windows. If it doesnt, they sent you a crapo drive get your money back.
edit: The reason Linux is the answer to everything is generally because you are free to use Linux however you want. That freedom means it comes with a lot of tools, you aren't kept away from the hardware, and can get access to a lot more information a lot more easily.
If you have a DVD burner, I would just download the Ubuntu iso from here. Burn that to a disk (I assume you have burned an iso to a disk before?) put it in your optical drive a boot from that. In not, another easy way is by using pen drive linux. You can get that from here. (look for the big blue button that says download uui).
Then you take a usb flash drive and plug it into your pc. Tell the software what flash drive to use, and point it to the directory where you downloaded the Ubuntu ISO. Follow instrunctions and you now have Ubuntu on the flash drive.
Boot from the flash drive and you should be able to find your new hard drive in linux, if it is working. (It should show up right on the ubuntu desktop if it is detected)
does It showing up in your bios? If not try restoring to default on your settings.
I had to do that to get a DVD drive to show up couple of days ago.
you'll need it to show up in your bios before linux or windows will detect it.
There's something your just not telling us. You say you bought your HDD from Newegg but that it's not financially prudent for you to return it under an RMA. I've purchased from Newegg but have never had a problem returning defective merchandise. In fact, they have always provided me a pre-paid shipping label that I would only need to stick on the outside of the box and then take to the nearest UPS office. So I hope you understand that returning defective merchandise is something that would not cost you anything but the time to do it -- assuming you didn't wait forever while your warranty expired. Therefore, I hope you see the problems I'm having when you say you can't do it.
In any case, there are several technical details your somehow forgot too. For example, is the new HDD a SATA 1,2 or 3? Does it support older SATA modes with a jumper (something you might be able to determine online if you knew the manufacturer -- that you didn't tell us)? You also fail to say what you're using for a SATA controller (embedded or a card) or even if you've tested your controller with other SATA drives. Then there's the issue of BIOS/EUFI settings where you may have simply forgot to enable your (embedded) controller or possibly even are trying to use ACHI mode on an ancient SATA 1 HDD (which very likely won't work). And of course, there's that one very basic question I'm sure everyone is about to yell out, can you hear it spin up when you apply power? Because if not, then duh!
I'm also troubled by the implication that you may be trying to do this "hot". And sure, plugging SATA devices in hot is OK, but then there's the matter that you may not be allowing enough time for the OS to see it. And that leads to the other obvious question, are you patient enough to allow the system to detect it?
Not knowing the answers, I'd suggest connecting everything to the system while the system is off. Then boot the system. If you use Windows then the "Disk Management" tool should tell you if your drive is connected even if there's no format or data on it (right-click "computer", select "manage" and then select "Disk Management"). There are several "disk managers" on your favorite Linux distro too. However, if you use Linux, I'd suggest trying the easy one called GParted though there are many other great utilities such as the command line FDISK or CFDISK. Using one of those tools and knowing that your controller ans BIOS/EUFI is OK then it's almost certainly a dead drive. But again, and I can't stress this enough, that conclusion would assume you already know that there's no BIOS/EUFI settings problems or controller problems.
I don't know if that helps. Just trying to add my 2-cents here.