help with installing SATA HDD

funkyCable · 22-01-2007, 15:16

Hi

I got this SATA Drive http://www.westerndigital.com/en/pro...sp?DriveID=196 I have physically installed the drive but my xp media centre edition does not want to pick it up what else do I need to do 2 get this to work. I want to partition it so that I have two 160 gig partitions

Paul K · 22-01-2007, 15:22

Have you looked in control panel, administrative tools, computer management, Disk Management?

funkyCable · 22-01-2007, 15:37

this is what I have
Attachment 12964

I have a Dell Dimension 3100 which has a 80 gig hdd I know Dell used about 10 gig from another partition that has diagnostic software and settings on it. I also have a 10gig IDE HDD. But cannot make out which is the new SATA Drive I installed.

22-01-2007, 15:40

Is your sata controller turned on in bios?

funkyCable · 22-01-2007, 15:46

how do I find this in the BIOS? is there any terms I must look out for before restarting? I thought if it was picking up my current SATA drive it would automatically pick up the new one.

22-01-2007, 16:24

oh right so one of the drives is sata already .Is the drive sata 2? if so there may be a jumper to change on the back to limit its speed

funkyCable · 22-01-2007, 16:47

oh I had a look in the bios and saw that there was another sata device which was turned off. I turned it on downloaded the Western Digital software and have formatted the device only thing that is strange is that the western digital software is showing that I have two 160 gig partition where windows is saying that I only have 2 149gig hdds any ideas why and which one should I believe?

22-01-2007, 16:53

149 will be correct you lose in the format and maths its all bobbins but you have 149 on each partition

Gareth · 22-01-2007, 17:53

Yep, it's just marketing bullsh*t by HDD manufacturers... 160GB doesn't really equal 160GB useable data.

funkyCable · 22-01-2007, 18:55

what if I format it to only one partition will I gain any extra space?

Paul K · 22-01-2007, 19:05

Probably not. They kind of try the 1Gb = 1000Mb instead of 1024Mb trick which is why the 2 numbers never really add up. Plus you have the overheads of the formatting.

22-01-2007, 19:14

298 is what my WD 320 = as 1 partition so its the same

funkyCable · 22-01-2007, 19:18

thanks zingle.

Stuart · 22-01-2007, 19:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul

Probably not. They kind of try the 1Gb = 1000Mb instead of 1024Mb trick which is why the 2 numbers never really add up. Plus you have the overheads of the formatting.

The upshot of that being that if Windows shows a different amount of space than the HDD manufacturer, Windows is always right.