I have just installed Windows but my hard drives arent showing up 'My Computer'. Are they broken? (27/05/2007)
Answer:
The first thing you should do when a PC is not registering hard drives properly is check the connectors. Often with Molex and SATA connectors they can look like they are connected properly but in fact need a bit of a push to be all the way in, so go round giving a firm but careful push to all your relevant connectors.
1) To solve this problem, go to the 'Start' bar (or the Windows icon in the bottom left for Vista users) and right click on 'My computer' followed by a left click on 'manage'.
2) Near the bottom of the options here you will find one labeled 'Disk Management' which needs a left click. Here, in the top right hand window, you will see the formatted hard drives with their volume allocation letter (e.g. (C:)) and below will list the drives that are plugged into the computer.
3) Discs that are properly formatted will be in blue and will be labeled 'Healthy'. Discs that are not formatted will show in black and will be labeled 'Raw'. Right click your raw partition and select 'format' then in the new window that appears click next where you can. The only option you need to change is to select the tick box that is labeled 'NTFS Quick'. Once your machine has finished the task your hard drives will all show correctly in 'My Computer'
Remember that if your copy of windows has become corrupt somehow it can also be a cause for a PC not to read hard drives. If this is the case then this particular symptom is often accompanies by other stability issues, so if this is something you are experiencing then a clean install of Windows is a good idea.
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