Is my new Hard drive working?

Question

So I have a 160gb HD in my PC right now...so completely corrupted, I dont want to take the time/spend the money on fixing it. I bought a 500GB hard drive about a year ago and when I tried hooking it up...while the 160gb was the main drive, It didnt read the 500gb one. I am finally going to buy a copy of Windows to put on the 500gb hoping it works. When I unhook the 160gb and just have the Sata 500gb plugged in (its new and completely blank) it just gives a black screen and says Error...something something something....insert some kinda disc. Is this normal for a blank hard drive? is it working? I just figured the reason it wasnt reading on the 160gb because it was so corrupted. Can someone shed some light on my situation? I would much appreciate any help. Cheers!

Answer 1

The Captain is right-but why do you want to scrap your 160 GB hard drive?Format it and use it for a backup.

Answer 2

I hate to insult your computer knowledge, but is the hard drive connected in both chords?  The wide flat cord, and the power cord with all the wires running to a white plug in?  I seriously ran around circles trying to get a hard drive to work in my computer only to figure out I didn't have the drive's power cord plugged in just right.  It's tricky.

It's not normal for you to plug in a back up hard drive and your computer not to recognize it.  You need to mark the new hard drive as a "slave" if your 160gb  is your "master" drive (the one that runs all the programs).  You can change the new drive to "slave" by moving that little white piece on those metal pegs.  Look all around your new hard drive and you'll know what I mean.  Read your manufacturer's manual for the drive and it will tell you how to set it for a "slave" setting.  (You may need a tweezers to get the little white peg out) That's the only thing I can think of.  You definitely need to designate your drives between a master and slave before a new one can work.  Good luck man.  

Answer 3

It needs to be formatted

You should get a message like "Invalid system disk insert system disk or restart yada yada"

You need a bootable disk, windows for example, so that you can format the hard dive, which still wont work cause you dont have an operating system ....this is just if you want to use the 160 as the bootable OS disk drive and not the 500gb

in short but made long becuase of my backwardness, just boot from a OS disk and install the operating system