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I have a PC that once had Ubuntu Linux installed on it across 2 SATA hard drives.

The first hard drive had the root ( / ) and swap on it.

The second had ( /home ) directory as mount point. This has a large amount of data on it, formatted in ext4 I believe.

I decided to remove the first hard drive and replace it with another, and installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it. I kept the second hard drive in the PC because I want to format it into NTFS and use it as a backup/storage drive.

After installing Windows 7 on the new first drive, in Computer Management it doesn't see the other hard drive.

How can I get Windows 7 to detect and see the second hard drive in Computer Management? I would like to format it into NTFS-- Note: I do not want to have Win7 read/write to the linux filesystem, nor do I care to keep the files on it intact. I am fine with losing them since I have them backed up.

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  • does the bios show 2 harddisks?
    – freethinker
    Commented May 23, 2011 at 8:04
  • If the partitions dont show in Computer Management, does the Disk itself show?
    – Spectre
    Commented May 23, 2011 at 8:48
  • @freethinker the BIOS did show the hard disks, but they were disabled somehow. That was the problem.
    – spong
    Commented May 23, 2011 at 19:59

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You can directly try the 3rd step here, but if you don't see your second disk, you'll need to go to BIOS and recheck starting from there.
1. Reboot and enter BIOS settings.
2. Confirm second disk is visible.
3. Boot into Windows 7 and reach Administrative Tools, Disk Management
Delete the second disk partition and reformat it to your choice.

Just in case you are wondering, you can read your ext4 partition data with Ext2Read.
And, if you don't see your second drive in step 1 above, you might want to start from checking the cables in your PC -- you may have left them unplugged while changing drives :-)

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  • Thanks. The answer was that the BIOS somehow had this SATA drive disabled, which is certainly weird how my previous install of Ubuntu it was working. After enabling it, I booted up Win7 again and the drive was visible and available to be formatted.
    – spong
    Commented May 23, 2011 at 17:46
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In my case, it worked really well with rufus.

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

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  • Welcome to Super User! Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link(s), as the answer can become invalid if the linked page(s) change.
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 10:44
  • Welcome to Super User. Can you expand your answer a bit? Just pointing to a product doesn't really explain how to accomplish the solution. It's better to include some instructions on how to use the product to solve the problem, or at least describe what makes the product a good solution. Good guidance on recommending software here: meta.superuser.com/questions/5329/…. Thanks.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 17:10
  • Rufus recognized my whole multi-partition, multi-filesystem drive and allowed me to format it from within windows. Thanks.
    – Pau Coma Ramirez
    Commented Dec 17, 2016 at 1:28
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Simply insert win 7 CD, go to run setup, it will show all partitions, delete partition and create new (store your data first), and install win7.

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