need help with new harddrive

[hbk409]

I picked up a maxtor 500gb ata harddrive and when i boot it see the hard drive, windows dects it. However when i go into my computer its no where to be found. I can see it in the device manager however. What is going on. Normally these should be plug and play correct? I am using windows xp media center 05 edition

 

[RandallA]

Right click My Computer.
Click on Manage
Expand Storage and click on Disk Management
Look for your new hard drive and right click on it.
Click on Format.

 

[loves2watch]

Ditto. And once it has been formatted, your OS will then see it and be able to store files within.

 

[hbk409]

thanks for the quick response. this is the first time i can remember having to do this usually its just plug and play

 

[snathanb]

thanks for the quick response. this is the first time i can remember having to do this usually its just plug and play

I've had to do this with every internal hard drive I've ever added under windows XP or vista.