Help with new hard drive

[Dave Reid]

I've just bought a new ATA 80Gb Maxtor hard drive (unformatted & un
partitioned) Instead of adding it to the internal drive bay, I've bought an
external data storage caddy for it.

I've installed the hard drive in the caddy and connected the device to
my pc using the USB cable. In XP home, the device is recognised and
installed, but there is no icon appears in "my computer", so I cannot format
it.

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I set the jumpers on the reverse of the external h/d so that I can
carry it from PC to laptop?

2. How do I format/partition the drive if there is no icon in my computer. I
thought I could just right click on the icon in my computer and click
format! Someone said it had to be partitioned BEFORE windows can recognise
it.

Internally, I have an 80Gb h/d, a cd-rw drive & a dvd-rw drive. XP
Home, Athlon XP1800, 1Gb ram. One thing is that the caddy is USB 1.1 & 2.0
compatible, but the USB ports/hub that I have are all USB 1.1 only - will
this make a difference to how it works, with the exception of the speed?

Thanks in advance. I'm sure this is kindergarten stuff for most of you, but
I'd really appreciate the help.


Dave

 

[bearman]

I've just bought a new ATA 80Gb Maxtor hard drive (unformatted & un
partitioned) Instead of adding it to the internal drive bay, I've bought an
external data storage caddy for it.

I've installed the hard drive in the caddy and connected the device to
my pc using the USB cable. In XP home, the device is recognised and
installed, but there is no icon appears in "my computer", so I cannot format
it.

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I set the jumpers on the reverse of the external h/d so that I can
carry it from PC to laptop?

2. How do I format/partition the drive if there is no icon in my computer. I
thought I could just right click on the icon in my computer and click
format! Someone said it had to be partitioned BEFORE windows can recognise
it.

Internally, I have an 80Gb h/d, a cd-rw drive & a dvd-rw drive. XP
Home, Athlon XP1800, 1Gb ram. One thing is that the caddy is USB 1.1 & 2.0
compatible, but the USB ports/hub that I have are all USB 1.1 only - will
this make a difference to how it works, with the exception of the speed?

Thanks in advance. I'm sure this is kindergarten stuff for most of you, but
I'd really appreciate the help.


Dave

Didn't the drive come with a CD to use to partition and format? Western
Digital comes with a program called Data Lifeguard that does that and also
lets you, essentially, clone your other drive if you want.

Bearman

 

[Dave Reid]

No, the drive just came "as is" I think it is OEM. No floppy, no CD,
nothing. It's a Maxtor DiamondMax 9...

Dave

 

[Grinder]

I've just bought a new ATA 80Gb Maxtor hard drive (unformatted & un
partitioned) Instead of adding it to the internal drive bay, I've bought an
external data storage caddy for it.

I've installed the hard drive in the caddy and connected the device to
my pc using the USB cable. In XP home, the device is recognised and
installed, but there is no icon appears in "my computer", so I cannot format
it.

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I set the jumpers on the reverse of the external h/d so that I can
carry it from PC to laptop?

If you're connecting it to a USB port it both scenarios, I can't imagine
what jumpers would need to be set. What are those jumpers described as
doing? Just to be clear, you're talking about jumpers on the caddy, right?

2. How do I format/partition the drive if there is no icon in my computer. I
thought I could just right click on the icon in my computer and click
format! Someone said it had to be partitioned BEFORE windows can recognise
it.

Go into the Control Panel, in Administrative Tools and open Computer
Management. One of the items in the tree will be Disk Managment. That
will show your devices, and you can manage them by right clicking on them.

 

[bearman]

Then you should go to Maxtor's web site and explore your options. Or you
can Google for info.

 

[Larc]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:15:08 -0000, "Dave Reid"

| I've just bought a new ATA 80Gb Maxtor hard drive (unformatted & un
| partitioned) Instead of adding it to the internal drive bay, I've bought an
| external data storage caddy for it.
|
| I've installed the hard drive in the caddy and connected the device to
| my pc using the USB cable. In XP home, the device is recognised and
| installed, but there is no icon appears in "my computer", so I cannot format
| it.

Grinder gave you the right answer. Another way to access the drive is
to right click on My Computer on your desktop and select Manage. Then
select Disk Management. You should see your new drive, but it will
need to be initialized, partitioned and formatted before you can use
it. All this can be done in the Disk Management window.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

 

[Dave Reid]

You guys! Thanks very much - I just did what you said and the drive is now
up & working. I can't thank you enough.

I know I took the easy option by asking you instead of going to the
Maxtor site, or even googling but I always find that asking someone who has
probably done this a million times and can explain everything in plain
English works every time, but thanks for at least replying Bearman )

If anyone ever needs to know anything about Neil Young, just ask me! )

Thanks a million once again.

Dave

 

[Larc]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:45:36 -0000, "Dave Reid"

| You guys! Thanks very much - I just did what you said and the drive is now
| up & working. I can't thank you enough.
|
| I know I took the easy option by asking you instead of going to the
| Maxtor site, or even googling but I always find that asking someone who has
| probably done this a million times and can explain everything in plain
| English works every time, but thanks for at least replying Bearman )
|
| If anyone ever needs to know anything about Neil Young, just ask me! )
|
| Thanks a million once again.

You're welcome! Glad to hear you got it working.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

 

[John Smithe]

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I set the jumpers on the reverse of the external h/d so that I
can carry it from PC to laptop?

The caddy documentation should cover this. I'm assuming your talking about
the jumper(s) on the hard drive. I did this with a laptop drive recently
and the caddy documentation specified where to put the jumper(s). I think
that the jumper position will be the same whether connected to a laptop or
a desktop.

2. How do I format/partition the drive if there is no icon in my
computer. I thought I could just right click on the icon in my computer
and click format! Someone said it had to be partitioned BEFORE windows
can recognise it.

Grinder and larc covered this.

Internally, I have an 80Gb h/d, a cd-rw drive & a dvd-rw drive. XP
Home, Athlon XP1800, 1Gb ram. One thing is that the caddy is USB 1.1 &
2.0 compatible, but the USB ports/hub that I have are all USB 1.1 only -
will this make a difference to how it works, with the exception of the
speed?

Not sure but I would guess no difference. Consider getting a USB2.0 card.
They are cheap and the speed difference will be huge. The USB1.0 and
USB1.1 speeds will make your hard drive slow as molasses.

Quoted From: http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature

The USB specification version 2.0 was created to be fully backward
compatible with earlier versions of the specification for consumers’
investment protection. The USB specification revision 2.0 incorporates the
higher performance that end-users requested-- the fast data-transfer rate
of 480 Mb/s. By combining all three USB data transfer rates into the
latest specification, peripherals already running at the slower speeds
(1.5 Mb/s, 12 Mb/s) covered by earlier versions of the specification (1.0
and 1.1) are designed to be fully compatible with other products designed
to the USB specification version 2.0. So this way, you plug it in – and
it just works.

USB2.0 (480Mbps) is slow compared to a hard drive but USB1.1 (12Mbps) is
barely moving compared to a hard drive. The site also discusses what
package markings to look for when purchasing a USB2.0 product.

Good Luck

 

[Dave Reid]

Thanks for the info John. You're right about the speed, I tried to move a
12Gb bunch of files and the estimated time was around 300+ minutes! I am due
to get a new pc in January - waiting for the sales ) - so it will, I
guess, have all the updated bell & whistles.

Thanks again to (almost) all who replied

Dave