Installing an internal hard drive is always preferable over using USBs or other external disks for storing data and even booting from there. Of course, you don’t desire portability when you want to increase the hard disk of your Windows PC permanently. This tutorial will help you out to install and setup SATA hard drive in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.

Install and Setup a SATA Hard Drive in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 1

For adding a SATA hard drive to your Windows PC, you need to have some room assigned for this purpose in CPU cover. Mount the hard drive in the space provided and make the connections. Almost all SATA drives use interface unless you are using servers. SATA uses simple cables that easily fit on the drive and motherboard connector one way. Connect one end of the SATA cable to the drive and the other end to an available SATA port on your motherboard. Next, you have to connect the hard drive to the power cable of CPU.

When you have properly mounted hard drive to your PC, power up your system and then enter the BIOS/UEFI. In BIOS, go to the Standard System Settings menu or the integrated Peripherals->SATA menu for viewing all drives installed in the system. If you have enabled al the drive controllers and the drive is properly connected, it should show up in BIOS.

If SATA drive doesn’t make to your BIOS, then you may again by restarting your system. If this tactic doesn’t help, you may plug SATA cable into different port on the motherboard.

Install and Setup a SATA Hard Drive in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 2

For confirming Windows recognizes the drive, you need to launch Device Manager. In Windows 8, right-click the Windows button on your desktop and select Device Manager. Check for the drive in the Disk Drives section.

When you boot into Windows after installing the drive, you will see the “New Hardware Found” wizard popup if the drive is detected. The last thing is to partition and format the drive.

After following the above steps, the drive should be ready for use. If you split the drive into multiple partitions, you will see many drives appear in File Explorer, each with its own drive letter and label.

You are now ready to use your SATA drive for storing your data or installing Windows. The procedure to install and setup a SATA hard drive is simply a piece of cake.