I have 2 internal hard disks, both exactly the same make and size (500gb each). One of them contains my Vista installation and the other was previously used solely as backup for the Vista drive.

I now want to install Linux on this second drive and set up a dual boot system. I started by deleting the contents of this second drive. After doing this I find that Explorer now only shows drives C: and E: (DVD) plus a few removable drives.



Any idea why drive D: is no longer showing?

Hi luapnotro,

Welcome to Vista Forums!

Go to Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management and please take a screenshot of that page and attach it to a reply so I can see what it shows about this other drive (and all your drives). You should have formatted it rather than deleted it. By deleting it, you removed files used by the system to recognize it as a hard drive - but I believe we can resolve the problem. I just want to see what the situation looks like at the moment before recommending any action.

Thanks and good luck!

Thanks! Here is what I see:

Right click on the unallocated Disk 1 and see if the format option is available (not greyed out). If so, click on Format and choose NTFS and format the drive. You may need to right click again afterwards to name it Drive D if it has no drive letter or it isn't D as you want it to be. Once done, it should appear again as normal in Windows Explorer.

I hope this works. Post back if it does not present the option to format or if any other problems occur (and please explain what you did and what the problem is and provide the word-for-word content of any error messages you get during the process).

Good luck!

The option to format is only available on the allocated dirve (C. The only options for the unallocated drive are New Simple Volume, Properties and Help.

Click New Simple Volume and follow the prompts. Hopefully it will lead to an option to Format or open an option to Format once done.

Incidentally, the following may help in terms of setting up the dual-boot when the time comes: How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots.

But, one step at a time. First lets's get the drive working properly. Since I haven't heard in a whie, I'm assuming the above may actually be working (but taking some time). Let me know if you run into any troubles or it fails for some reason (and send another screenshot to see what did happen from what you did).

Thanks!

That's exactly what's happening - currently at 84%! The New Simple Volume wizard did, indeed, offer to format the disk.

Thanks for the dual boot link. We'll talk a little later!

Well, I've gone ahead and installed Linux to the now-visible drive - I thought installing this was more of a Linux issue than a Vista one so I sought help on their forums - hope you don't mind!

The experience of getting this installed (dual booting with Vista) was not one I want to repeat. The installation CD made the process extremely simple but only once you had decided where to put the installation - and that wasn't at all simple! When I posted the options to the Linux forum, a couple of the experts there weren't sure which partition I should use either!

Anyway, all is well now (I think!).

Let me finally just say that the quality of your help here has been up with the very best that I have seen anywhere - and I've participated in many, many forums!

I shall be coming here again - you have been warned!

Excellent news! I have no problems with you going to the other forum - it worked and that's what really matters in the long run. Would you mind posting a link to your thread there to help anyone with the same issues who might be looking for a solution?

Thanks for the feedback - it is appreciated.

I will report this thread as solved so it will be marked as such.

And welcome to Vista Forums! Now that you know where we are, bookmark the site and post anytime you have further questions or problems or if you just want to browse and learn (especially the Tutorial section offers some excellent advice on a wide variety of topics) or even if you want to try to help answer a question if you happen to see one where you know the answer and it hasn't already been posted. While it most likely won't be me the next time (though it might), there are many very skilled, experienced, knowledgeable, and friendly people here who, like me, volunteer their time to help others and one or maybe even several will respond to your post to assist you. While there are other forums on the web that do this sort of thing, you've now found what I think is the best (and I've posted in and/or checked out quite a few) so don't lose this link - you never know when it might come in handy again.

Good luck and best wishes.