New hard drive, can't format/partition

[Bob Eardley]

Just bought a new Western Digital 500 GB hard drive from Tiger Direct ($127 CAN, all included). My computer recognises it in BIOS but it does not show in My Computer. If I go in Device Manager it is listed, go to properties/populate it shows the correct size but nothing partitioned.
I have tried disco'ing other drives and even my 2 CD drives (thinking it might be because I have more than 4 drives was the problem).

I would guess I have to format/partition the new drive...but how?

Bob

[Wes Tribble]

Try this:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/disk_management.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

[TimCollier]

You have to activate the drive before you can format it.

First go to:

Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/Administrative Tools/Computer Management

Once there, click on Computer Management in list, then Storage, then Disk Management.

There, you should see the new drive shown in the grey area to the right, possibly as Disk1 or something similar.

Right click on the disk, and select make partition active.

Once it is active and assigned a drive letter, you can now right click and format it within Windows.

[Bob Eardley]

Thanks guys, all fixed now
I never would have guessed that the fix was already on my computer...now to do ludicrous file transfers

Bob