How to add and format a New Hard Drive

Windows xp Tips

How to add a new Hard Drive to my Computer

If you need to add extra room to store your songs, movies and pictures, or for backup all your data, the option is installing a new Hard Drive to your computer,
and in these days the storage cost per Gig is quite affordable.
That is exactly what I have done on my computer but it was not so easy as I thought and I had to struggle a bit before it was working fine.
After you have physically installed the HD inside your computer, if internal,or connected via USB2 , if external,you won't be able to see the new HD on MyComputer folder until you assign a Volume to it and format the HD.
Now,whether the Hard Drive is external or internal here is,step by step what has to be done to force Windows to recognize the Hard Drive and find it in the MyComputer folder.

When you start your computer press immediately F2 or Esc depending on your motherboard to enter the Bios setup, go to Advanced > Drives and check if the new HD has been detected. If it's a Sata HD and the first HD is Pata you probably have to change the RAID option to IDE.
Exit the Bios ,save the changes and finish booting.
Go to Start > ControlPanel>Administrative Tools > Computer Management
Select Disk Management from the left pane

On the right pane you can see all your disks and volumes but not the new one , you should be able to see it on the right-lower pane labeled as disk 1 probably, if the other one is disk 0.

Click on the disk that is recognized as the new HD and create a new volume following the wizard and format it.
Close the Computer Management Window and go to MyComputer.The HD should be there now with the new volume and the Label you gave it.

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Windows XP