Internal Hard Drive

protonstorm

New Member
Messages
4
Hey, so my hard drive on my HP pavilion failed recently and I purchased a Toshiba 1 TB DT01ACA100. It is my only hard drive at this time. Every time I boot it up, windows 8 does not recognize it, and I have checked the BIOS which says it is in and working fine. Please help!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
What does
windows 8 does not recognize it,
mean?

If the drive is not partitioned, it won't be mounted, and thus not seen, until you partition it.

You need to open the Disk Management utility and scroll down through the list of devices. You should see it there, without any partitions (if it's currently not partitioned).
 

My Computer

Partitioning has nothing to do with it, when you load the OS (win 8) it will ask you what partitions you want. The HD you purchased is a SATA hard drive.Toshiba 1 TB DT01ACA100 If your Original HD was an ATA/ IDE hard drive then your computer won't recognize it. Go to the HP web site and see if the motherboard that's in your Pavillion supports SATA hard Drives. If not get the exact same kind of HD that came in your computer. Just get a larger capacity.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
There's no way he could have physically connected a SATA drive to ATA/IDE interface. If BIOS recognizes it, that means that drive is not partitioned (yes that means even if there's only one partition). What has to be done is to connect it to a computer that already has an OS and make at least one partition which is primary and active and formatted to NTFS file system. Another option is to boot your computer with Hirens Boot disk and do the same thing from there. HDDs usually come formatted but in case it was meant or used on some other machine, like MAC. game console or CCTV, it could be in some other format, unrecognized by windows setup. All that under condition that it is in working order. More than once I found a brand new HDD that was DOA, to say nothing about used ones.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
Let me see if I understood right. There is an HP Pavilion and the ONLY drive in it is recognized by BIOS but windows boot disk can not recognize it. In that case it means that it does not have a defined partition and is not formatted. There's no way to see disk management or anything from windows. It has to be partitioned ( at least 1 partition) and be formatted by third party software from a bootable disk or USB. Hireens boot disk has all the necessary utilities for that, it is free and can be used for all kinds of stuff.
The other way is to connect in some other computer as secondary HDD and from there make it usable with win disk management or something like Easus partition master (my favorite) or some of tens of other programs for operations like that.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
I stand corrected , I assumed it was a new HD which should come with one partition and the OS would ask him if he wanted other partitions.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
I am not a tech but had a relevant question; If his PC has a hard drive, regardless of partitions, couldn't he recover an image from a usb external drive in order to begin to get things going.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Pro x 64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 8300, Dell Inspiron 15 R N5010
    Memory
    6 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GE force 420
    Hard Drives
    1TB
    Browser
    Edge, Chrome
    Antivirus
    Defender, MBAM, Router
It's hard to say every time I reinstalled an OS I formatted the drive with another computer setting it as a slave. The Hard drive always had two partitions when I Installed the OS and it asked me where I wanted to put the OS which was the smaller of the two partitions usually 10 gigs. I don't know if you can take an image from an external drive.?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
There's no Master-Slave relation with SATA ports and drives so no worry there, plug it in and that's it. As far as partitioning goes it is practical to have one partition for OS and other(s) for the rest of stuff, that way if you have to reformat because of OS you do not lose data. It would help if first, BOOT partition is made and formatted as Primary and Active, that way Windows will chose it as default partition. I find it very useful to give names to every disk or partition so it is clear which one is which. Windows tend to mark the disk/partition it is installed to C: and if you don't know which one you are installing to it could be installed on another one and leave BOOT sector on the first one.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
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