Hard disk only half recognised

[Stoday]

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit. I was running three hard disks, two in bootable Raid 1 and the other as a hot spare on which I could write backup files.

One of the raid disks failed. The intel raid software worked very well, if somewhat slowly, taking 4 hours to reform my raid array with the hot spare.

I have now replaced the dud drive. However I've got recognition problems. Device Manager can see the disk and reports it's working OK. Computer cannot find it. I've plugged in my external e-sata disk, and Windows recognises that straight away.

BIOS does recognise the drive, but thinks it's a raid drive. The raid controller recognises it.

In the old pre vista days I would be looking to format the new disk, but I don't seem to have such an option in Vista.

Any ideas?

[RichieP]

Right click Computer > Manage

Click Disk Management

The drive will probably show in the list as Unallocated.

Right-click on it and select New Simple Volume.

Follow the prompts. A quick Format will be enough.

[Stoday]

Thanks for responding RichieP.

I click on "Computer" but I don't get a manage option.

This is what I get:

The local disk (C:) is the raid 1 array; Biz (F:) is the extternal e-sata disk

I hope you can suggest my next option.

[RichieP]

Right click

[Stoday]

Well, I got there in the end. Vista dosn't just hide stuff, it buries it. Thanks for the hint RichieP. I looked for "Computer Management". Just in case anyone else has the same problem, here's my answer:

Get into control panel. I used to use the classic view; that was my mistake. You can't find "Computer Management" in the classic view. So,
Control Panel >
System and Maintenance >
Administrative Tools >
Computer Management >
Storage >
Disk Management >
Now you can right click on the disks to set partitions and format.

Once formatted, I was away. Phew!