SATA Hard Disk(s) not recognised

Hi All,
I've had three 1Tb hard disks, two from Hitachi (Deskstar 7K1000) and one from Seagate (Barracuda 7200.11) and all three have not been recognised by Windows.

I have tested on one PC with Vista x64 and XP SP2 (32bit) and on a second PC running Windows Home Server, plus I have placed into an external HD Case and connect via USB 2.0 to both those PCs plus a third (XP SP2). All with the same error. Connection is via SATA.

The error basically means that the HDs are recognised by the BIOS on each PC, and are shown in Device Manager in Windows. But the drive letter never appears in My Computer. The drive is never accessible.

(Funnily Windows Home Server sees the full data capacity of the HD but cannot write to them.)

Have I been unlucky and had 3 DOA HDs? Or am I doing something wrong? Installing a hard disk is pretty simple as far as I know! (plug in power, plug in SATA, boot up). Would appreciate any help! Thanks

Have you been into Disk Management to create a partition and format them? If not then right-click My Computer, select Manage then go down to Disk Management and do the necessary.

Start > Run | diskmgmt.msc
Initialize them and create partitions. They don't ship with formatted with drive letters assigned.

Thanks, if that works I'll have a big red face :)

Waiting on big red face to appear ........... :lol:

lol you're not the first :cough: I've done it :cough: and you won't be the last :D

Not quite as bad as the just completed new build and can't get it to power up and your daughter comes in and flicks the switch on at the socket ..... doh!

Thanks guys, got home and tried this. Very happy it worked!

Worst thing is, its taken me 3 hard disks to finally post a message. Thanks very much!