Annoying Windows 7 "feature" or am I forgetting something?

[FrankJH]

I dont think Im missing anything but I cant figure this out for the life of me;

Ive got a Windows 7 Premium machine which has been booting perfectly off an ssd for a while without issue.

Ive recently added a couple of 1TB wd sata 2 disks which do not appear in My Computer no matter what I seem to do.

1) SSD and both WD disks are correctly identified in Bios
2) Both WD's are also found within Device Manager without issue, and identified as running ok (all other devices within DM are also identified correctly and running as they should)

No drive letters (for the WD's) are assigned

When windows initially started after adding the mechanical drives, a driver was automatically installed but this didnt appear to make any difference on any subsequent reboots.

These are "old" drives, so I cant be sure of the contents. I wouldnt mind verifying this if possible, but I wouldnt lose any sleep if they had to be formatted again straight away .......if I had a drive letter to format that is

Am I missing something daft or is this a quirk with Windows 7 I have forgotten about regarding adding drives to a pre-existing install?

 

[bledd]

type

Disk Management

into the start menu, then right click the drives and assign drive letters.

It's a server feature really, to protect other Windows installs from users who could delete / remove files from a secondary install.



Quite a handy feature if you have your drive partitioned like this..

Windows partition
Data partition

If you insert a drive like this into a machine, it won't assign a drive letter automatically to the Windows partition, but it will give one to the data partition.

 

[FrankJH]

type

Disk Management

into the start menu, then right click the drives and assign drive letters.

Im doing this now -thank you

Didnt this use to happen automatically?

edit I think these are old Unraid disks (which would make sense), Im guessing because of the differing format type Windows wouldnt assign drive letters automatically.

Im sure if they had been unformatted / new disks they would have been found straight away

Thanks again

 

[bledd]

-was in mid-edit as you replied