New secondary drive not recognized

I have an HP Pavilion dv9400. It has 2 hard drives. The second drive (D) died a sad death...slowly but surely. It was accessible some of the time and other times the system would just hang and require a cold boot to continue. The computer is under warranty and I contacted HP. They determined I needed a new hard drive which they sent me. I installed it as directed (pulled on the tab of the old one, popped it out, installed the new one making sure to press down on the contacts to insure connection). Now the BIOS will recognize the drive and run a self test with a PASS but device manager will not show the D drive. Nor will Windows Explorer or Disk Management. After MANY discussions with HP Support they decided the new drive was bad and sent me ANOTHER one. I installed it today and the results are exactly the same.

Now they are telling me I have to restore the computer to factory defaults in order to make the D drive recognizable by the system. I do not want to do this as it will be a nightmare to reinstall all programs and custom settings etc. I have the latest BIOS F.3D. NOTHING was done to the computer other than remove and replace the hard drive. Now, I am at a loss. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

I hope I gave enough detailed and complete information....but if you need more just let me know.

Thanks.

Shadow

 

I haven't done this for a laptop, but I know that for installing new desktop drives, you have to format the new drive (using the bios) for it to be recognized in windows explorer.

 

I roamed all around in the BIOS and could not find any option for formatting a drive. I cannot find any place elsewhere in the computer to even recognize the drive to format it.

I might add that I DO see Disk 0 and Disk 1 in Disk Management. I do have both initialized and both are listed as Basic with Disk 1 (D) being unallocated. But there are no options in that area for formatting a drive. Again, it IS seen in BIOS as a valid secondary drive.

Confusing to me to be sure.

Shadow

 

If you right-click on the unallocated drive in Disk Management, you should have the option to format.

 

Unfortunately there is not an option to format there. Only Initialize, Properties and Help. After much digging, head scratching and no less than 10 conversations with HP Support......I finally got it fixed. Turns out that although it was initialized, it was still not allocated. I had to go in and create a simple volume and that then let me assign a drive letter and FINALLY then format it.

I am so disgusted with HP support.....as their repeated answers were to return the hard drive for another, do a complete system recovery and lose everything I had, or take it in for repairs. NOT ONE ever mentioned having to format the drive or how to do so. It was so darn simple once I got there and figured it out. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!! Now have to head to the beauty shop a couple of weeks early to get all the NEW gray hairs covered up!!!!!

Thanks for your help, guys....I appreciate it.