HP Omen hard drive help please

Skysinger · ‎02-22-2018

Hi all. Could you please help a non tech savvy mom with what's probably an obvious fix?
I bought an Omen gaming PC for my lad for Christmas. It's the model with the 2 slots at the top of the case for hard drives. PC world told me I just needed to drop the hard drive into a slot n it would work as easy as that. I bought a 4tb internal hard drive, inserted into the slot and nothing happens. Tried to get advice from PC world who admitted they had no idea and currently I'm trying to chat to an HP support assistant who's responses are slower than a very tired snail and clearly has no idea what I'm talking about (he's just gone off to "research").
Am I missing something very obvious? I'm moderately ok with computers but as a console gamer the world of gaming PCs is new to me and I'm feeling a bit lost 😞 Please help.

krzemien · ‎02-22-2018

Not sure which OMEN exaclty you own, but information contained in the below PDF (see page 12 [14]) should be of some help:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05185356

Are you sure you have all necessary cables (namely: SATA & power) in place?

Skysinger · ‎02-22-2018

Hiya. Thanks for responding so quickly. I think it's the 880-000 series. I'll have a look at the pdf and hopefully it'll help.
I'm not sure what SATA means but my son's been playing on the PC since Christmas with no probs so I assume all the relevant cables are in place.

Skysinger · ‎02-22-2018

Hi again. The pdf you supplied is for installing the hard drive inside the PC case. The model that I have has 2 external slots for hard drives which apparently you just screw the hard drive into the pull out casings, slot back into the tower and away you go. When I do this nothing happens:( I just want to be sure that I'm not missing anything obvious before I cart the tower back to PC world

Skysinger · ‎02-22-2018

https://youtu.be/q6qRPJ9MpZE

This link is the HP guide to installing hard drives in those slots. Thought it'd give a better idea of what I'm talking about. I've followed the guide exactly but nothing happens. I'm probably being really thick here lol n missing something obvious.

krzemien · ‎02-22-2018

OK, so this PDF probably matches your hardware:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05535552

And by the look of it (page 4) disk should just work indeed once inserted there as all the cables should already be there.

So disk possibly need to be partitioned / formatted. Try to follow this procedure:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-disk-management-2626080

https://www.lifewire.com/disk-management-2625863

Skysinger · ‎02-22-2018

Brilliant. Thank you!! I'll give it a whirl and let you know if I have any luck. Thanks again.

krzemien · ‎02-22-2018

If your new HDD is recognised by hardware, it should also be present in Disk Management - from there you should be able to initalise / format it / assign a letter.

If your new HDD is not present there, try either to re-sit it - or install it in the second slot and try checking there again.

(I assume you did mount the HDD in Omen with power off)

In neither case you should also hear the difference when this drive is physically working (i.e. powered up & spinning) - it generates aditional subtle noise.

Skysinger · ‎02-22-2018

I did try to install with the power off but I didn't check in Disk Management because I didn't know how to access it lol.

I'd thought that I may need to partition/format but shied away from it as I had no idea how to do it. That walk through that you supplied seems easy enough to follow though so I'll have a go if my son ever comes off Roblox.

I didn't realise that the drive would make a noise if it was working. I'll deffo have a listen.
Thanks so much for your help so far. Hopefully I'll have some luck now.

Kalos531 · ‎08-21-2018

Did you ever get this resolved?