external drive with laptop query

[RB]

Got a friend with a 40G laptop who would like to use a physical duplicate of
his hard drive as an external drive via USB.

He's plugged the external drive into a USB port. The laptop recognizes the
device as a mass storage device. However, the drive isn't showing when he
goes to "My Computer".

He does have a boot disk.

Sounds like he's missing some simple step, but way over my head.

All help appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Your friend might have the software for the usb drive ask him to install
that software.

 

[Nepatsfan]

Got a friend with a 40G laptop who would like to use a
physical duplicate of his hard drive as an external drive via
USB.
He's plugged the external drive into a USB port. The laptop
recognizes the device as a mass storage device. However,
the drive isn't showing when he goes to "My Computer".

He does have a boot disk.

Sounds like he's missing some simple step, but way over my
head.
All help appreciated.

Go to Start -> Run and enter diskmgmt.msc in the Open box.
Does the external hard drive show up in Disk Management?
If it does, he needs to make sure the drive is partitioned and
formatted.
That can be done by right clicking the drive in the lower pane
and selecting the appropriate action from the menu.
Once that's done, it should show up as a drive in My Computer.

Good luck

Nepatsfan