Bought one from eBay a short while ago, 20 odd gigs fer 20 odd quids.

Went and bought a double jointed ribbon cable because the existing only went from MB to 1st HDD. Plugged it in and managed to work out which end was the primary HDD. Sorted. Nice. No problem. Assumed the other connection was the seconday HDD, I plugged it in. Plugged the power cable in.

Upon starting up, I got the usual 'New Hardware Detected' thing and it automatically scanned and installed drivers.

Now. This is the part where Davy nearlly flipped his lid. Went into 'My Computer' to admire my new HDD...and...NOTHING. I assumed this is the usual 'Restart now blah de blah' kinda thing. Restarted. Got the usual primary drive check thing. Primary was my usual drive, and the secondary drive check was my new drive. Seemed ok, but still no secondary HDD in 'My Computer'.

I can't format it, because I have no idea what the drive ID is.

Heeeeeeeeeelp!! >_<

And then burn it. In a big fire. And claim compensation money so you can get a professional in.

I must confess I do like apple but I'm on Lennon here. I've had about 25 fudge-ups in the past 2 years, most meaning I've lost quite a lot of data. So I don't let either of my sisters near this anymore. That'll teach 'em.

Hmm, I must confess that I don't understand why people bash Macs anymore. Why would anyone side with the poster child for mindless consumerism? (Gates!) Whose products are no where near as stable as a good mac. (haven't tried XP, heard good things) Mac bashing is just a status thing now. If I could switch over I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Secondary HDDs are a wonderful thing, but one of mine is finally dying. I'll hear a click and then it'll spin down followed by a freeze. I'll wack the side of my case and it'll spin back up again. That's a desperate trick I learned when faced witha similar problem back when I had a 486. I've backed it up to the other drive so its just a matter of finding time to replace it. I think I'll get an external firewire or usb 2.0 drive though for my music files. Portability rules, and they are fast enough now to stream large data files such as individual tracks and whole song chunks. (Mark of the Unicorn makes firewire based hard disk recorders capable of recording, and handling quite a few tracks, at 24/96 over one cable. Its a beautiful thing)

I concur. Mac is sexy. I just can't afford to buy a new PC.

Whenever I install a HD out of a box, it usually comes with a startup disk of somekind. It should prompt you to format and partition etc. At least thats what maxtor does anyway, if I remember correctly.

What flippin start up disk? I didn't get any with this HDD and my PC start-up disk is a packard bell special disk (not Windows on it's own).

I tried fdisk like Temporal said to do. Just when I tried fdisking the damn thing, it just stays on 0%.

zero sodding percent!!

'Preparing drive 0% complete'

WHAT THE HELL IAS GOING ON AND HOW DO I SORT THIS THING OUT?! O_o