Computer not recognizing hard drive
 

Hi, guys. My computer used to have 80 gigs of hard drive space. I say "used to" because it no longer recognizes one of the two hard drives in my computer. Last night I reformatted both drives and now it only recognizes one of the two drives so I only have 40 gigs of space. How do I get my computer to recognize the other drive again?

Go into your Administrative Tools from Control Panel.

Computer Management.

Storage.

Disk Management.

Does it show up there? If so, right click on the drive you want to format, and format it in NTFS. Good luck!




If it doesn't show up, check your cables, and check BIOS.

Yeah it shows up in the but it says its unallocated. How do I format it in NTFS? I right clicked on it and the only option is to convert it to a dynamic disk. There is no format option, atleast none that I see. Thanks!

I'm not sure. It should let you format it. The only thing it says, at all, is "Convert to Dynamic Disk?" Are you sure you don't have your system set up in RAID or something?

if ti says unallocated, right click on it and that should give you the format options.

"Convert to dynamic" appears when you right-click the disk (n) area at the left side. That's not what you want. Right-click on the large area to the right instead.

Yes. Perfect!

Oh ok, that helps, but I still dont have a direct option to just format it. I do have an option that says "New partition..." when i right click the unallocated space. Then it takes me into a New Partition Wizard Menu. Is this what you are talking about? If so, do I make it a primary or extended partition? I already have a primary partition which is my C drive. Will that make a difference?

Yes.

You could use primary or extended. If you make it extended you'll have to take the next step and allocate logical drives. Not much point unless you have larger plans.

Remind me how we got here? I'm trying to understand why you don't already have one big partition.

Well, in April, my friend put in another hard drive to double my hard drive space to 80 gigs. So I have two separate hard drives in my computer, each with a 40 gig capacity. When I reformatted the other day, I lost access to a hard drive so I was back to 40 gigs again.

Oh, by the way it worked! Thanks a lot to everyone's feedback. You all were very helpful.