I have an internal hard drive and when I install it in the bay and hook the power and sata cord up and turn the computer on, my computer does not reconize the hard drive? Any thoughts?

Is drive recognized in BIOS?

BTW, no need to create new thread for every new problem you face, you already have a thread here.

It's not recognized at all. And that thread is a week old so I didn't know if I should of went back and posted on it.

It is recognized in BIOS, but it still does not show up in windows explorer. I was told I need to use a jumper shunt to set it as a slave, so which two pins do I connect to make it a slave? My original pre-installed hard drive has 1 & 2 connected so I supposed that is the master setting.

Serial ATA interface doesn't have that Master-Slave "relations" between the drives. Each drive has its own channel and is working independently.

Is the disk a new empty one?
If yes, then if the drive is showing in BIOS and the system is booting fine, you should first simply initialize your drive in Windows Control Panel->Administrating Tools->Computer Management->Disc Management. After that you should format the drive.

Okay I went to that and clicked Action->All Tasks->Intialize Disks and selected my new hard drive . So I'm guessing it worked as I can go do it again. Could you tell me how I format the drve now? Btw you seem to know more about this then the idiot Gateway technician

When i install a new drive i always format and partition in DOS before i boot to windows so i have never seen the behavior you are seeing.

If you don't want to partition it just right click on the drive in Disk Management and format it.

If you have your operating disc you can partition and format it. Or if you have the drive mfr disc you can partition and format with it too. Most drive websites have tool downloads

I dont see where to format it but I see partition and I get to the second pic attached and don't know which to choose.

Sorry i'm using XP Pro still. Are you using Vi$ta?

If you need to use this harddrive for booting at some point, you should create a Primary Partition. When the partition has been created you can format it (use NTFS format - it's better in most respects).

If you only need to use it for data, then you can choose Primary Partition as above, or you can choose to first create an Extended Partition, then create a Logical Drive in the Extended Partition, and finally format the Logical Drive.

XP Home

Okay I got to this, should I check any boxes or just hit next?

You might want to change the Volume label to something else besides "New Volume" but you can also make this change by renaming the drive in Explorer at any later time.

If you're in a hurry and you're really really sure the drive has no bad sectors, you can choose the "Perform a quick format". If you want the drive to be checked for bad sectors during formatting, and I'd personally recommend you do this the first time you format the drive, leave this option unchecked.

What does enable file and folder compression mean?

Exactly what is says.

When you format a drive using the NTFS filesystem (but not with FAT or FAT32), you can compress files and/or folders with files in order to save space on the drive. Some types of files like e.g. text files can be compressed a lot while other files already compressed in some other way, e.g. JPEG and MP3 files, cannot be compressed at all or only compressed a little bit.

This compression is similar to what you would do with a ZIP archive, but it's also different because any program can use an NTFS compressed file just as it would use an uncompressed file (except that performance might be worse when writing a compressed file).

Checking the "Enable file and folder compression" option will enable compression for *all* files and folders on the drive by default. I suggest you leave that option unchecked.

You can always compress individual files and folders later on if you feel like it.

Microsoft KB article: How To Use File Compression in Windows XP

You give good step by step directions! It works now! Thanks DrageMester, rolling56, and others!

Good deal. Fill it up now

Already in the process of doing so heh