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    Computer Won't Recognize Secondary 500GB Hard Drive

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by weinstein888, Dec 3, 2011.

  1. weinstein888

    weinstein888 Notebook Evangelist

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    I've already reinstalled Windows once because of this issue. This time I reinstalled, I installed all my drivers, restarted my computer, then found that the drive was no longer recognized by the computer as drive D, and instead my blu-ray player has taken D's place. I've had so many problems installing this new drive and reinstalling Windows, and I just want my computer to work :( Please help.
     
    weinstein888, Dec 3, 2011
    #1
  2. jwolf7722

    jwolf7722 Notebook Deity

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    From what I remember you have to rename your CD drive and format your second HDD. Computer management under disk management is were this takes place if memory serves me right.
     
    jwolf7722, Dec 3, 2011
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  3. weinstein888

    weinstein888 Notebook Evangelist

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    "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error." is the response I get when I try to initialize the hard drive to format it.
     
    weinstein888, Dec 3, 2011
    #3
  4. weinstein888

    weinstein888 Notebook Evangelist

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    weinstein888, Dec 3, 2011
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  5. jcaulley

    jcaulley Notebook Consultant

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    This drive wasn't by chance a part of a RAID 0 array that you recently broke to install an SSD was it?
     
    jcaulley, Dec 4, 2011
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  6. Serephucus

    Serephucus Notebook Deity

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    Yes, the XT is compatible with the M17x.
     
    Serephucus, Dec 4, 2011
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  7. The Revelator

    The Revelator Notebook Prophet

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    Open an elevated command prompt (Start>Run, type cmd into the box and run as Administrator). At the prompt, type "diskpart" (no quotes) and Enter. This will open the Diskpart utility. Type "list disk" and Enter. It will return a list of all the disk drives seen by your computer. If your lost 500GB drive is shown, then diskpart can be used to partition and format the disk and assign a drive identifier, but no sense getting into that process unless the disk is visible at the list disk command.
     
    The Revelator, Dec 5, 2011
    #7