So I just go another hard drive for my laptop. Now my computer see's it but it does not show up in My computer. I need to put a partition on it but do not know how to do it. Can anyone please help?

 

http://www.syschat.com/how-partition...dows-1827.html

 

Short version:

Right click My Computer
Choose manage
Disk management
Right click on drive in bottom right hand window
Format
the rest is easy

 

ditto

 

Ok thanks. Thats what I was looking for. I couldnt remember how to find that. Now the problem is that I installed a 320gb drive. Its only letting me format about 81gb of it. It wont let me format the other 220gb. Its already like in two partitions. The 220gb is all greyed out when I try and do anthing with it. Anymore ideas?

 

Make sure you're formating it as NTFS. If the 81gb is still empty I would delete the partition and start over. If you don't want to do that then right click the unallocated space and choose New Partition then see if you can format it. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000

 

If this is the hard drive that has his os on it and is the only drive assumeing becasue its a laptop and you are booted to windows, it should not let you format it becasue you are on the os. You would have to use xp or what ever os cd you have and boot to it and then format it. You can create you partitions there.
You could also use a floopy boot disck and run fdisk command.

 

xp need at least sp1 hor an harddrive that big

 

Thanks for all the help guys. I dont think I was clear enough. I will try and start over. Ok, I have a laptop with two hardrives. I am running windows vista 64 bit version. Both the hard drives are 320gb Western Digital Scorpio Black hard drives. Now, when I open the computer management screen, it shows the hard drive having two partitions. It says either is unallocated. One is 81gb and the other is 218gb. I can format the 81gb into a hard drive to problem. Now the other 218gb partition wont let me do anything to it. When I right click it, all the options are greyed out. It also wont let me join the two partitions either. Do you think its bad? Anymore ideas?

 

Here is a picture of it

 

Delete the 81 gb partition and then the whole drive should show as unallocated.

 

That does not work. I have tried. It still shows them separated and wont let me join them.

 

Are you right clicking on the partition and selecting Delete Partition?

If you want to totally nuke the drive and start over, download this and build the boot CD:

www.dban.org

Make SURE you don't nuke the main drive!

 

Well it doesn't say delete partition, it says delete volume. I think thats the same. It doesn't say anything about deleting a partition. I think im going to try the dban thing. By the way, thanks a lot for your help GLC.

 

Oh - once you delete the volume, then I think you can delete the partition.