Just received in my brand new G73S

and right out of the box we have problems Houston...

The laptop is supposed to come with a 500+500 GB hard drive. Windows Explorer shows C (120GB) and D (380 GB) and nothing else. IOW no E for 2nd HD.

Went to bios and could not see anything there.

Is there something "magical" I am missing?

Thanks, Mike

 

Go to disk management

Type diskmgmt.msc into the start menu

 

Okay, I did.

What I get is
Disk 1 Dynamic
Foreign

and an exclamation mark over the Disk 1

 

There should be two disks, Disk 0 and Disk 1 (or Disk 1 and Disk 2). If there's only one, it's either not there, dead or not connected. You could just get a screwdriver and check it.

 

So your suggesting that I open it up (physically)? What about my warranty and all of that? Not to mention I have limited to no idea what it entails to remove the cover off of one of these things.

The diskmgmt file does show Disk 0 and Disk 1. Disk 0 is (presumably) the disk that is operating fine. Disk 1 gives the above mentioned message.

Mike

 

Blitzburgh whats the full model number. G73SW-A1, G73SW-XN1, G73SW-XR1? Depending on the model some actually do only have one internal drive, while others have two.

 

(wrong thread)

 

So it seems that both HDDs are installed. Maybe the second one is not partitioned and formatted?

 

I know this may sound ignorant but I don't see anything that mentions my laptop being anything other than a G73S. I looked on the bottom and it was stamped the same.

 

To get your exact model you might check your sales receipt or if you bought it online most places will let you check your order history where it will show the model you got.

 

Here is what I see with diskmgmt

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/cc0dc

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/c6588

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/f9960

The first is the launch window.

Numbers 1 and 2 are me right clicking on properties and what they display. Have to laugh because #1 says device is working properly. LOL

 

Thanks for that pointer, you were correct.

I have a G73SW-A1

 

OK great, the second disc is physically there. Have you used this disc at all? If it's empty try to right click on it and Import Foreign disc. You might be able to also just format it and assign it a drive letter.

 

Before I leap on this, I want to make sure of my steps.

When I right click on it to import the foreign volume, it identifies Disk 1 as the available disk to import (so far so good)

When I click OK it brings me to a 2nd screen that states this:

3bcc0.jpg at Free Image Hosting

I am a little concerned here because one is called a simple volume with 200GB the other is called a striped volume with 500 GB. (Nevermind the oddball 100MB just hanging out there.)

When I click on the 500GB to import I am brought to a 2nd screen that has a warning saying everything will be lost. What could be lost I have no idea since it is a new computer, but all the same I want to be cautious.

BTW - I really thank you for all the help.

Mike

 

I mean for all I know, this could be operating 100% correctly. I have no idea as I have never dealt with SATA and striped drives. Simple po dunk IDE master slaves and nothing else. So this is all new to me.

 

Do it as simple drive that will allow you to use them independently. You'll lose any info that might have been stored by you on there like pics, movies, etc. Since its brand new and you havent put anything on it there wont be a concern for data loss.

 

Well, I think we have came to the end of the line on this one. The option to do a simple didn't exist beyond 100MB so I went with the striped. Here is the resulting screenshot. Looks like I have a defective out of the box harddrive.

ed42a.jpg at Free Image Hosting

 

Blitzburg, That is horrible, I would call your 'dealer' and demand a full refund. Did they claim it was new? It would also be a service to this community if you could post who you bought it from.
PS Excellent advice from Angel above

 

Here's what happened. You received a laptop with two working 500GB HDDs. But for some reason one of them came with someone else's data. Meaning that someone has put a used HDD in your laptop. That fact that it was shown as "Foreign" (and had a striped partition) means that it was taken out of another laptop (that had two or more HDDs).

Now how and why that happened I have no idea. Where did you buy it? It would be a good idea to check the S.M.A.R.T. data of that HDD to check if it's healthy. Who knows how long it's been used. In any case, I think a complaint is in order. It should have come with a fresh, empty HDD, not with someone else's data.