N00b question

[kahunaking]

I just installed my first SATA drive and i cannot access it in windows. In the device manager it shows it but i cannot use it for storage.

 

[Rocco123]

Let's see if I get beaten to the punch.

Right click on My Computer, go to Manager. Go to Storage, Disk management. You should see a huge chunk of grey space, and the amount of space available. Right click on that space, go to Create Partition. Go through the wizards, assign drive letter, etc. etc. Once it's formatted, then you're good to go.

 

[kahunaking]

TYVM

I forgot all about that feature in windows.

 

[defakto]

hehe, it's not a feature, it's what you need to do to add drives.

 

[rodsfree]

hehe, it's not a feature, it's what you need to do to add drives.

/begin RANT

It would be a feature if it would do it automagically at the first boot with the new drive.

I don't know how many times I've had to tell friends, co-workers, family members, and peeps on the various forums I get on, how to do this.

I mean, if you try to access an unformatted floppy Windows will chuckle for a while and then ask you if you wnat to format it. If you install a preformatted drive it will automatically assign a drive letter and put it in my computer.

How much harder can this be?

/end RANT

 

[unhappy_mage]

I mean, if you try to access an unformatted floppy Windows will chuckle for a while and then ask you if you wnat to format it. If you install a preformatted drive it will automatically assign a drive letter and put it in my computer.

That's because you don't generally want to partition a floppy. Whether you partition a hard drive, on the other hand, depends on the user. I don't want Windows guessing about what I want to do, I want to be asked.

That said, it'd be nice if it offered to start disk management when it saw an empty disk. Offered once and then shut up forever.

 

[Slartibartfast]

That's because you don't generally want to partition a floppy. Whether you partition a hard drive, on the other hand, depends on the user. I don't want Windows guessing about what I want to do, I want to be asked.

Is it even possible to partition floppy drives? Interesting to think about...

Thinking about it though, I believe that through disk manager in windows, instead of giving a drive a letter you can assign it a mountpoint, like in linux. If one were to theoretically partition a floppy disk, I imagine you would have to do something like that.

 

[defakto]

Is it even possible to partition floppy drives? Interesting to think about...

Thinking about it though, I believe that through disk manager in windows, instead of giving a drive a letter you can assign it a mountpoint, like in linux. If one were to theoretically partition a floppy disk, I imagine you would have to do something like that.

You are correct. Windows will allow you to mount drives to folders, or to letters, or to format without setting a letter or mount point, you can do too many differnt things with a drive to have windows make that assumption of what should be done.

People complain about windows taking too much control from the user, but yet complain when it's not uber-intelligent and doesn't do the right thing all the time. No one complains that linux doesn't auto format and assign a mount point and not all linux users know how to set that up.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Is it even possible to partition floppy drives? Interesting to think about...

Thinking about it though, I believe that through disk manager in windows, instead of giving a drive a letter you can assign it a mountpoint, like in linux. If one were to theoretically partition a floppy disk, I imagine you would have to do something like that.

A floppy disk is a magnetic storage media just like a hard drive, it can be parittioned (although what would be the point?) given that the filesystem / OS supports it. FAT12 does not support partitioning though.'



This would be nice though..
"Windows has detected a new drive without a recognizeable file system. Click OK to open the Disk Management Console to create one now, or click Cancel to exit"

[ ] Check this box if you would like Windows to ignore new hard drives without a recognizeable file system


[OK] [Cancel]

 

[kahunaking]

Eh. Ive had to use it before for formating some ipod drives. Ive never had a new hard drive before lol. All of mine have been used and formatted before.

 

[NokshisR2]

Right click on My Computer, go to Manager. Go to Storage, Disk management. You should see a huge chunk of grey space, and the amount of space available. Right click on that space, go to Create Partition. Go through the wizards, assign drive letter, etc. etc. Once it's formatted, then you're good to go.

Thank you Hard members for being so helpful.

I am also glad I started to look through threads to see if anyone else had the problem I had before I created my own. >_>
I am still a n00b, but am learning.

 

[rodsfree]

That said, it'd be nice if it offered to start disk management when it saw an empty disk. Offered once and then shut up forever.

Which is all I want.
Then we wouldn't be getting this same question from everyone that we know.

And it would allow for the more tech savvy to pick out the options that they want for their new drive.

Any way, how many people install a new drive and don't format it?
Last time I checked, you couldn't use an drive unless it was formatted with a file system that Windows would recognize.

So, unless you were planning on using this for a dual boot system then you'd have to format it. And the only options after deciding to format are 1) cluster size 2) volume label 3) mount point/letter 4) file system NTFS / FAT32 (and it won't even allow FAT options if the drive wasn't already formatted in FAT)

And all of these options have a default.

So, how much harder is it to add an automatic popup wizard that asks these questions?

I guess that this is just my personal peeve - I've actually had people return drives as non-working because they couldn't figure out that Windows wouldn't install the drive automatically. Like it does with all of the other hardware on the market.