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General discussion

Secondary Hard Drives

Jun 15, 2010 11:30AM PDT

Hello,

I'm attempting to install a second hard drive into Vista. It shows up in the device manager, however it doesn't show up in My Computer. Do I need to do some formatting for the new drive? I'm fairly new to this so any help would be appreciated...

Chris

Discussion is locked

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A new drive will often
Jun 15, 2010 11:31AM PDT
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Vista confusion
Jun 15, 2010 11:38AM PDT

Well, I opened up the case, attached the power cord and SATA cable and started up my machine. I find it strange that windows sees the extra drive, but it doesn't allow me to use it. Do I need to restart my computer with the Vista disk I have and install the hard drive in that manner so I can start using it? Like I said I'm new so any help is much appreciated.

Thanks,

C

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You're almost there.
Jun 15, 2010 7:26PM PDT

Since the new drive is listed in Disk Management the OS recognises it, but it is not yet formatted so it cannot be listed as available in My Computer or Windows Explorer.

Disk Management should help you. Highlight the new drive there, right click and select "New Simple Volume", then carry on through the wizard. Remember to format the drive to NTFS and not FAT32.

Mark

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Light research.
Jun 15, 2010 7:47PM PDT

Links were supplied to help you prepare the new drive. Try that.
Bob

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Thank you
Jun 16, 2010 9:21AM PDT

I used the links you posted and just wanted to say that it worked. I'm super psyched to have the extra space available. Thanks for your help.

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Vista secondary hard drive and cloning
Jun 16, 2010 9:08AM PDT

To piggy back off of Chris's question about installing a secondary hard drive on Vista, I wanted to ask for advice on how to do the same as well as ask how this process might affect installing Windows 7. Please bear with me, this is my first time posting to a forum and I'm not sure how to succinctly ask my question.

I have a Lenovo T61 Thinkpad with Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2 32-bit operating system. I currently only have about 1 GB of space left on my 67.9 GB hard drive. I wanted to get rid of Vista and switch over to 7 but currently I do not have enough hard drive space to do that (I need at least 16 GB of free space.)

My first question concerns whether or not I should even switch over to 7. I already downloaded the ThinkVantage System Update 4.0 so I should have all the required device drivers and applications to install 7. I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Report and there were known issues concerning Lenovo Utilities, System Update, and ThinkPad EasyEject Utility. On Lenovo's support website it says that "You can upgrade to Windows 7 without uninstalling these applications, but you might encounter problems when running them on Windows 7." When I looked for an alternative application that supports Windows 7, as advised, I found that there are none for the 3 known issues as the cause of the problem is a "limitation of Windows 7." So what the heck do I do? I hate Vista but I don't want to install 7 and then not be able to properly use my computer.

My second question is how to install a secondary hard drive. Regardless of whether or not I install Windows 7, I still need more hard drive space on my laptop as I'm done to like 1 GB.

I have read horror stories of Vista users trying to clone their hard drive so that they can easily upgrade their hard drive. I am particularly concerned with the problems I've read concerning having to manually partition drives and trouble making the cloned Vista drive bootable (I don't even know what that means exactly...) I'm not very good with computers so I don't want to get in over my head while trying to upgrade my hard drive.

Can anyone give my advice on how to clone a Vista hard drive and then install a second hard drive? Also, once I've installed the cloned Vista hard drive, should I anticipate any problems with upgrading to Windows 7?

Thanks in advance for your help!

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I would cheat.
Jun 16, 2010 9:11AM PDT

I would consider installing a new drive to clean install 7 to. That way I could try a few times without touching my working install.

For all intent, there is no Windows 7 upgrade. Yes they call that upgrade that saves some user files but let's be honest.
Bob

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that's so much easier!
Jun 17, 2010 12:46AM PDT

Thanks so much, Bob! I don't know why I didn't think of that. That makes it so much easier. And since I saved my files to a portable hard drive already I can just put them back onto my computer once Windows 7 is installed.

I'm still concerned about the compatibility issues with some of the Lenovo software and Windows 7, but I guess there's nothing I can do about it.

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Like I said. I cheat.
Jun 17, 2010 12:54AM PDT

I cheat at every turn to get around the usual issues.

Let me share a cheat that wiped out a fellow (newbee) office worker. They were trying to duplicate a printed document I made. It was years ago and I couldn't figure out how to get some graph exactly where I wanted it.

I cheated. I printed the text out leaving space for the graph. Then I put the paper back in for the second printing with the graph landing where I wanted it.

They fought with that for weeks before they gave up and asked "How did you do that?"

"I cheated." and then told them how. Why they didn't ask weeks before is the real mystery. I didn't know they were trying to duplicate the work.
Bob