external enclosure and hard drive

[Rpercival]

I bought a Vantek 'Nexstar' 3.5 enclosure and an 80g hard drive. Windows XP Pro finds the enclosure and says that it is working properly, but My Computer doesn't show the hard drive. This is to use between my desktop at work and my lap top at home. Do you have to format the hard drive first ? IF so, how can I do this outside of a computer ?
Thanks

 

[firerock]

Yes, you need to format the drive first. Most of new HD comes w/ a utility disc that requires you to format the drive before it goes into Windows. So, just use that disc and format your HD. Also, make sure your HD is set in Master mode, not cable select or slave in your enclosure.

 

[akira34]

An even better way to format the drive is to just right click on "My Computer" select "Manage", then select the "Disk Management" item from under "Storage"... From there you can partition and format any hard drive connected to your system. Even if it doesn't show up on the desktop yet.

If you're moving between XP systems, or Win2k and XP systems, then pick NTFS (I'd use the quick format). Otherwise, you should select either Fat32 or just Fat. Fat should also be used if this is going across platforms (such as Mac to Windows) since it will allow you to mount the drive under both operating systems.

 

[Zepper]

They beat me to it. Making sure the drive's jumpers are set according to the enclosure mfr's directions is important. And of course the drive needs to be partitioned and formatted before it will be seen by high-level Windows programs.

.bh.