Removable hard drive

[Davia]

I just put a new Western Digital 160 GB hard drive into a
USB 2.0 enclosure that I had previously used with a 40.0
GB HD. Previously the drive showed up as a removable
drive when I clicked on my computer. Now, it is not
showing up, although it shows up in Device Manager
as "working properly" and it shows up in the tool bar
(the "safely remove hardware" icon).

What do I need to do to use this drive?

 

[Robert]

I just put a new Western Digital 160 GB hard drive into a
USB 2.0 enclosure that I had previously used with a 40.0
GB HD. Previously the drive showed up as a removable
drive when I clicked on my computer. Now, it is not
showing up, although it shows up in Device Manager
as "working properly" and it shows up in the tool bar
(the "safely remove hardware" icon).

What do I need to do to use this drive?

_______________
Hi, Davia!
Have you tried formatting your new drive from Device Manager?
If you tried and it would not format, maybe I have got a solution for
you.
I had the same kind of trouble with a HD and a FireWire casing but I
found a solution. Here are the steps involved:
1) Take your new HD out of its USB casing and install it as a normal
slave HD inside your main unit.
2) Launch XP. Partition (if desired) and format your HD using the
standard XP procedure.
3) Shutdown your PC.
4) Take your new HD out of the main unit, then put it back inside its
USB casing as a master HD.
5) It should now be properly recognized by XP.

 

[Davia]

Thanks for the hint. I think I'm going to have to take
the second route, since there is no format option within
Device Manager (I assume I would right click to find it),
and when I go into disk management, the drive doesn't
appear. I'll report back!

 

[Davia]

We did what you suggested and it worked! Thanks. (It
was actually a little more complicated than that,
involving the use of an ATA controller card internally,
but after installing the ATA controller card and the hard
drive internally, and formatting it internally, we took
it out, put it back in the external enclosure and it is
working). Thanks for taking the time to help.