Thanks everyone. Since this advice has worked on all but this new drive, it's on its way back to the retailer.
By coincidence, someone at work had just bought a hard drive, which he hadn't used yet. He brought it over after I told him about this, as he didn't know how to set it inside a PC (I thought I was thick with PCs!). We set it up as a slave drive on this heap and it worked first time. I also noticed that my 250GB drive was getting extremely hot to the touch, it was so hot I could barely hold it for more than a few seconds. All told, best to get it returned and replaced. The 40MB old drive and my colleague's 80GB drive worked first time, so it's highly likely it wasn't my lack of PC knowledge to blame after all. -- Dilwyn Jones ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roy wood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 12:08 AM Subject: Re: [ql-users] new hard disk > >OK, I give up. How do you get Windows XP to format a new second > >hard >>disk? > The answer is simple if not very intuitive. Windows hides the Device > manger because ;yer casual user' can easily destroy the system from > there. > > Go to the start menu, right click anywhere and choose 'properties', > In > the Start Menu tab choose 'advanced', In that choose 'advanced' > again. > Scroll down to 'System Administrative Tools' and choose 'Display on > the > All programs menu and the start menu'. Click OK. Then go to the > start > menu choose 'Administrative Tools', Choose Computer Management, > Choose > Disk Management > > You will see you unformatted and uninitiated .Drive there. First > Initiate it and then format or partition it. > -- > Roy Wood > Q Branch. 20 Locks Hill, Portslade, Sussex.BN41 2LB > Tel: +44 (0) 1273 386030 fax: +44 (0) 1273 430501 skype : > royqbranch > web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk > > _______________________________________________ > QL-Users Mailing List > http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm > > > -- > Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 269.2.0/756 - Release Date: > 10/04/2007 22:44 > > _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm