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Installing second SATA hard drive on Dimension 4700
Hi All! I've been hunting around for an hour trying to find an answer to my question before posting, but no luck. Hopefully someone can help me!
I am not a very computer-savvy person, but decided for financial reasons to upgrade my Dimension 4700 rather than getting a new computer. I have successfully upgraded RAM to 4MB and installed a new video card. Each upgrade done separately to make sure computer was working properly before moving to the next upgrade :-). My last item is installing a 1TB WD internal hard drive. My problem is getting the computer to recognize it. I went into system setup when booting, and set it to recognize the second hard drive. In setup, it shows my drive as being present. After reading several threads in this forum, it seems like I should just have to go to "disk management" and format the hard drive. BUT...when I go to disk management, I don't see the second hard drive! I'm running Windows XP.
Please help! Is there something else I need to be doing? FYI...I installed this new hard drive as the secondary one, it is just for storage, so the original hard drive is still set up as the primary.
Thanks for any advice!
Deborah
osprey4
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July 14th, 2012 13:00
Hi Deborah,
Well for not being computer savvy, you appear to me to have done everything correctly. :emotion-2:
One question, is your original drive IDE or SATA? An IDE drive has a flat wide data cable, while an SATA drive has a thin cable.
spoongirldeb
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July 14th, 2012 16:00
It's a SATA drive also.
rdunnill
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July 14th, 2012 22:00
Does it show up in Device Manager?
spoongirldeb
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July 15th, 2012 07:00
No, unfortunately not. That's the problem. It seems like Windows doesn't recognize it even exists. But I can see it in the system setup, so I know it must be connected properly, or I would think I wouldn't see it there at all either.
osprey4
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July 15th, 2012 10:00
Deborah,
The only thing that comes to mind would be an incompatibility between the drive and your system. One suggestion would be to update the BIOS, which may improve this situation.
The other possibility is that you've purchased a newer drive that is not backward compatible. Can you tell me the exact model of your new drive?
spoongirldeb
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July 15th, 2012 12:00
Thanks for the help. The model number is HDS721010DLE630. I did find something (can't remember where now) that I was looking at before I purchased it that seemed to indicate it would be compatible with my system, but maybe it's not :-(. I'll try updating the BIOS as you suggested. Is there anything I need to do prior to updating?
osprey4
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July 15th, 2012 17:00
Yes, that's an SATA III drive, which may not be compatible with your system. You should look for an SATA II drive.
There's nothing else you need to do to update the BIOS other than follow the instructions carefully.
rdunnill
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July 17th, 2012 00:00
If the new drive is empty, you might try disconnecting the current primary and attempting to install XP on the new drive.
Another solution would be to use a third-party SATA card like the Syba 150R. At $15, it's cheaper than a new hard drive.
ssmith900
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October 6th, 2012 14:00
i read somewhere that there is a cap reading hard drive size, above a certain GB it wont read it. im sorry but i dont remember the number of GB or if there is a fix. update bios to a10 and get a smaller HDD will work. for some reason i remember looking at 320 GB HDDs (because i was going to do the same think OP) 500 is pushing it (i think i cant remember the cap). i currently use a 1 TB Hdd as an external for all my music and games, but i'm not sure if the dell can support that big of an HDD internally (why - im not sure)
keep scouring the intranet & youll find a better answer
SS