Portable hard drive problem

mishima

Not sure if this is where I should be posting, but I'll chance a limb anyway.

I just got a portable hard drive (internal + enclosure), set it up properly, plugged it in and it's not available for use.

I get messages saying that it is being picked up and ready to use (courtesy of the yellow bubble in the bottom right), but it isn't on display when I go to My Computer.

Perhaps I'm overlooking something simple here, but can anyone shed any light on this?

Cheers.

blorg

Check if it shows up in device manager (Right click on My Computer > Manage > Device Manager).

If it does and there is no yellow triangle beside it, it probably just needs to be partitioned and formatted. You do this in disk manager (My Computer > Manage > Disk Manager)

1. right click on the disk, and initialise
2. right click on unallocated space, partition, think you can select to format too at this stage, use NTFS if you don't want to use the disk on non-2000/XP machines (it is more reliable) use FAT32 otherwise (e.g. you might want to use it from 98/Mac/Linux.)
3. if you don't format in the last step just right click on the new partition and 'format'

mishima

That's perfect dude! Formatting as I type this!

Thanks a million for that!