2nd hard drive not recognized

[mactoshb]

Vista, Service pack 2, 2MB Ram, 2 X 100gb hard drives in Vaio VGN AR51E laptop
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Hi I am having a hard drive problem, specifically, second hard drive.
I just reloaded a Sony Vaio VGN AR51E laptop using the sony recovery disks.
Works perfecty except for not recognizing 2nd hard drive. It shows 2 100 GB drves in Bios But "My Computer" and "Device Manager" only see C and it is listed as 84.2GB, not 100 as it should be (I know it never shows full size but not minus 17GB) I tried "New hardware" but it doesn't seem to list hard disks Just storage controllers
I changed the second hard drive to another, no difference, I have checked the cable connections to hard drives and even swapped with cable from a similar laptop. Both drives show in Bios as 100GB so it must be a Windows problem, I think.
Would appreciate any help on this as I am trying to sell and cant till I sort this out
Thanks, Boyd

 

[Triple6]

Have you looked in Disk Management? Disk Management: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

As for the missing space, its likely a hidden recovery partition that is taking up that space, see what Disk Management shows.

 

[frankjohn]

If the drive shows in disc managment it then has to be formated

 

[mactoshb]

Hi, just got back in, quick reply.
In Disk management the 2nd hard drive shows as uninitialized, I tried printing out the instruction on initializing it and followed them, or would if I could understand it
Triple6 is probably right about the missing space I forgot about that (Prat! that's me.) I have just printed out the pages from your link and will get back to you when I can get a look and try anything relevant.
Frankjohn, I am cheating at the moment and took out the C: drive and am loading the unrecognised one using the recovery disks, it was the only way I could get it to format. I will disable the Windows copy on it and return the C:drive and start with it and see what happens.
Thanks for both the replies and I will keep you informed, Boyd

 

[mactoshb]

Hi, just tried to send what I will repeat below, but tiscali crashed so if this is a repeat my apologies.
My problem seems to be solved, I said I was formatting and loading the new disk using my sony recovery disks, well after replacing the original disk with Vista on it in bay 0 and putting the freshly loaded one in bay 1 and starting, I got a message Windows was installing drivers for a generic volume and then that it was ready to use after a restart.
On restarting the disk is showing as it should in Computer etc as drive G, which I will alter,
Both it and the original are shoing as 84.2 GB, which as you said Triple6 will be due to the recovery partition. I will format that dik in due course and remove the partition.
The link Frankjohn seems to not mention Vista but had I needed to could have figured out how to get there in Vista.
Incidentally the hidden partition does not show at all in Disk Management, I suppose that is their idea though
Anyway, Thanks for your help, Microsofts is too much gobblygook.
Boyd