Adding a 2nd HD in Vista Ultimate OEM

[Guest]

Hi All,

I'm running Vista Ultimate OEM vers. and I'm trying to add another SATA HD
to use as a backup drive. I already have a RAID 0 as the main drive and an
additional drive for swap, small backups etc. but have exceeded capacity and
need a new full backup drive.

Problem is I can't get Vista to recognise the drive. It appears in the
Device Manager as an unknown device and doesn't appear at all in the Disk
Manager. The drive does work, however, on another XP machine with no problems.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[JW]

Is the drive formatted in NTFS format>

 

[Guest]

Yep. It works fine in my other XP box. Interestingly, I tried booting from
the Vista install CD and going into the repair bit and the drive is visible
in there. Just won't show up in the OS.

ALSO noticed whilst moving things around last night, that if I move my
existing backup drive (working) onto a different SATA header on the mobo, it
also disappears from the OS.

Is this the OEM version blocking any hardware changes? Seems strange.

 

[CJM]

Is this the OEM version blocking any hardware changes? Seems strange.

No. The OEM version is identical to the retail version.

You can add as many disks as you like, so your problem lies elsewhere.

 

[JW]

Check your BIOS and see if the drives appear to be recognized properly. It
appears that you may have a SATA port problem. Is your BIOS uptodate?

 

[Guest]

I already have a RAID 0 as the main drive and an
additional drive for swap, small backups etc.

How can you have a one drive RAID 0 setup? To me it looks like you have a
configuration problem.

 

[Guest]

How can you have a one drive RAID 0 setup? To me it looks like you have a
configuration problem.

Sorry - should have been clearer. My main system "drive" is a RAID 0 array
of a pair of physical discs.

My BIOS is up to date, all connected drives are being identified correctly
by the BIOS and when I boot the machine from the Vista install disc the drive
and its partition are visible, just not visible when actually in Vista. As I
said, the drive appears in the Device Manager window as "Other Device", not
under "Disk Drives", and has no driver installed. I can't install or update
the driver and I'm not sure where to go from here.

 

[Don]

Sorry - should have been clearer. My main system "drive" is a RAID 0 array
of a pair of physical discs.

My BIOS is up to date, all connected drives are being identified correctly
by the BIOS and when I boot the machine from the Vista install disc the drive
and its partition are visible, just not visible when actually in Vista. As I
said, the drive appears in the Device Manager window as "Other Device", not
under "Disk Drives", and has no driver installed. I can't install or update
the driver and I'm not sure where to go from here.

I don't think you said if your RAID drives are on a SATA controller, or
same/different controller as the new SATA drive.

 

[Guest]

OK - solved it. Apparently, when you install a new bit of hardware and the
"install driver" box appears at bootup and you click "Automatically search
for and install driver", my copy of Vista failed to look in the
windows/system32 folder. As soon as I manually told it to look there, it
installed and worked like a dream.

Happy dayz!

 

[Guest]

Your problem sounds like mine.
But how do you make it manually to go look there?
I can't remember getting any message like that?