Bios cannot detect new WD terabyte drive

[Magicianer]

I bought 2 drives, both the same, both from ncix.com, both 1 terabyte WDs. I've tried them in 2 computers with known working sata hard drives. I can't believe that I would've received 2 faulty Western Digital drives. All the settings are correct in the bios as far as I can tell (as I said other sata drives work with the same cables, ports).

I tried on a M3N78-VM Asus motherboard and a Abit AB9. I tried booting into vista on one just to see if I could see it in the disk manager, but of course it wasn't there.

Any help would be appreciated.

[dadrian]

Maybe you attached the drives to sata raid ports. Or you should've done that.
You should try attaching 1 at the time, while the system is on. the sata drives are plug and play, they are detected automatically and instantly. Perfectly safe.
If that doesn't work either, try a bios update.

[Magicianer]

Thanks for the reply. I attached them to both types. I tried one at a time (my one pc only has one sata power cord). I might try a bios update but I updated near the start of this year already.

[kaninelupus]

The difficulty you are dealing with is that many of the WD HDD's are not pre-formatted...apparently to make them Mac compatible.
You'll need to use Windows' Disk Management snapin to format the drive and create volume.

Winkey+R to open the Run console. Enter in (without speach marks)
"compmgmt.msc".... hit Enter

To damn tired to write out the whole process, so will simple post guides below for both Vista and XP. Once set-up, you'll have a fully-functioning external drive :)

XP method

Vista guide 1
Vista guide 2

[seoulman2]

I agree with kaninelupus. Ya gotta format first. Have fun partitioning. Vista's partitioning tool is brutal and I've read third party tools are not Vista friendly. I, too, am the proud owner of two WD 1TB drives (green)- both set up as USB. Each took about 12 hours to format (I don't recommend formatting via USB unless you're a person with lots of time!). Both work flawlessly and are used as main backups.

[kaninelupus]

I agree with kaninelupus. Ya gotta format first. Have fun partitioning. Vista's partitioning tool is brutal and I've read third party tools are not Vista friendly. I, too, am the proud owner of two WD 1TB drives (green)- both set up as USB. Each took about 12 hours to format (I don't recommend formatting via USB unless you're a person with lots of time!). Both work flawlessly and are used as main backups.

12 HRS?? My 500GB took around 2hrs using Vista Disc Management tools (not really sure why you describe as "brutal", as have used Partition Magic in past under XP and really wasn't that much more user friendly). Which was fine, as just let run before heading to bed, so really didn't care... mind you, was using eSATA connection, so may be why it was quicker ;)

Still, if you format over night, time require shouldn't be an issue. If you are stuck on using Disk Management tools, just sing out and will try and clarify any questions you may have :)

[dadrian]

Actually, if you format the disk in quick mode, simply by checking (or unchecking, not sure) the box, it takes seconds.
Second, i used a partition manager on vista: Paragon. It worked well, no problems there.
The vista manager can be accessed by right click on the computer and select manage. If the drives appear at the disk management section, any partition manager can handle them just as well. When you have a tool that comes with windows, after using all windows versions since 95, I can tell that by not installing any crappy software, you may avoid a system crash.
Have fun!

[Magicianer]

Someone must have misunderstood something in my post. I am trying to have at least a bios find them or an OS (disk management), neither have worked. I know how to format the drives once they are found. Thanks for the posts anyway.

[seoulman2]

Sorry for the side track.
Have you checked the jumper setting on the TB drives? Simple, I know. But sometimes forgotten.

If that's not the problem, maybe try them hooked up to a usb connection to see if they work that way.

[kaninelupus]

Someone must have misunderstood something in my post. I am trying to have at least a bios find them or an OS (disk management), neither have worked. I know how to format the drives once they are found. Thanks for the posts anyway.

Hmmmm - admitting to blonde moment.... misread and was thinking external drive :$

I'm guessing you have scanned drive for obvious faulty connections (within drives themselves). As to the possibility of two no-functional drives, as it sounds like they were delivered together; is it possible the package was dropped in transit?

Also, is their a RAID controller in the mix?

[Magicianer]

seoulman2: no jumpers are used as far as I know.

kaninelupus: Both of the first to motherboards have built-in raid controllers. I'm looking into trying it on another PC, but that one would need to use a sata/raid controller card as it only has IDE.

Thanks for the replies.