Can't access new USB drive

[Josh Bass]

For my Windos XP Pro based PC, I got a 160 gig internal drive from Seagate, and an enclosure with a USB port, effectively making it an external drive. I put it together, hooked it up, and everything seemed ok, except that I can't access it. When I click "my computer" all the drives and whatnot come up, except that one. It's turned on, it's there under the device manager (working properly, might I add), but I can't get into it to do stuff. Do I have to format it before I can access it? The disk that came with the enclosure (no disk with the drive) says it's only necessary for Win 98 (I have XP Pro). I don't know how to access it to format it. I did put it on cable select, instead of master or slave (the enclosure instructions say to make sure it's set to master--but there's a black IDE cable in there, which should automatically make it a master if the drive is set to cable select, no? Is this thing just a total piece of crap?

[Gints Klimanis]

I would get the drive to work in oyur system before you put it in the enclosure.

[Rob Lohman]

Josh: it sounds like it does not have a partition and/or format on it indeed.

Do the following once without the drive connected and then again with the
drive connected (wait like 30 seconds after connecting it):

Go to: control panel -> administrative tools -> Computer management -> Storage -> Disk Management

You should see a graphical overview (bottom half) of the drives attached to
your system.

When you do this the second time you should see an extra drive representing
your external drive. It probably is the one labeled "diskx" where x is should be
the highest number in the list.

If the graphical overview says "Unallocated" (it should have a black bar on
top of the white one where Unallocated is written) then you don't have a
partition on that drive yet. Right-click on that block that says Unallocated
and choose "New Partition". A Wizard should appear. Select Primary Partition
and select the maximum size (unless you want to split up the drive into
multiple section), which should be the default. You can choose a drive letter
(it will suggest the first one that is available/unused on your system) and
you can choose to format the drive (do so with NTFS and default allocation
unit size [both should be the default setting]). You can also give the partition
a name (volume label).

If the graphical overview does not say "Unallocated" it will probably have a
partition, if so it will have a blue bar (on top of the white one) and it should
say "HEALTHY" in the white bar. If that is the case, the upper half section
will list a drive letter but will not list a file system for that drive.

If this is the case, right-click on the white bar and choose format, see for
settings the last couple of lines two paragraphs above this one.

That should get you going.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Josh,

Yes, it will need to be formatted, per Rob's directions. And follow the instructions that say to set the drive's jumper to Master. I had a problem accessing an external drive set as Cable Select, and changing it to Master solved it.