How do I set up an unformatted external hard drive in a USB enclosure...

[Moonbeam]

and partition and format it?

I got a Western Digital 250G new drive and stuck it in an ADS USB Drive enclosure. Windows sees it as drive I a mass storage device. Is it ready to go or do I have to format it. I tried using the Utilities that came on the WD CD, but it says error insufficient drive letters or something and a 98 setup disk with fdisk does the same. I can't seem to find the drive sinceit's on a USB cable, I guess.

Windows sees it and has the option to format it, but as I remember the utilities that come with the disk do so fast and windowns takes all day to format my other much smaller drives. Also I can't remember if I can partition from windows. It's win XP. I was gonna pullit back out of the enclosure and stick it on an IDE and partition and format it there. Can windows do it. I was gonna just try, but if a format starts it gets the drive out of speck and the fast utility might not work. Anyway, can you tell me what you have done or what I should.

 

[alexruiz]

Windows should give you also the option to perform a quick format.... try it

 

[poppyq]

You should be able to right click on it in My Computer and choose to format. The other option is to go to the Computer Management console (right click on My Computer and choose Manage) and then choose Disk Management there and right click on the unallocated partition in the right pane and choose to format it. (The unallocated partition will be black in color). Hope this helps.

 

[Moonbeam]

It says there is no disk in the drive. Nothing to format.

 

[Moonbeam]

Suggestions?

 

[LunarRay]

It say's no disk because it is yet to be partitioned and formatted..
Plug it into your computer as a slave (internal) and fdisk and format it there then plug into the usb thingi.

I think this should at least get it sorted out.. and ready for the external device.

maybe..

or better still .. take one of your many smaller drives and put that in and see if it sees that, then if it does, go and fdisk and format the big one. I guess you should make it a single or master.. (the 250 when you put it in the usb)

 

[wallsfd949]

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Plug it into your computer as a slave (internal) and fdisk and format it there then plug into the usb thing.

That is what I had to do when I got a 120Gb to go in my External Firewire case.

Install it into your PC as a slave, format it with Computer Management (XP), put it back in your USB case and everything should work great.

 

[Moonbeam]

I gotta feeling if I do that I will have a 137 G drive. The dirve you formatted was under the 137 G limit. You are supposed to format or do something with data lifeguard tools but every time I run it it says I'm out of drive letters. I only got three raid drives and four ide cd or dvd drives in there with one partition per hard drive.

 

[LunarRay]

I think the current limit is 512 gb for fdisk to set up a partition..

 

[Moonbeam]

Well I wasn't listening to the advise I got and didn't try to do this through computer management so I pulled it back out of a different machine and stuck it back in it's external case. I'm gonna try to partition and format it now through the utility.

 

[LunarRay]

Well.... why doesn't that surprise me..

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: LunarRay
Well.... why doesn't that surprise me..

Because you know me?

To do it in XP non clasic:

Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintainance, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management (Local), scroll down if necessary to find the drive and right click in the box that shows the drive capacity. I also set the drive to active somewhere and don't know if I needed to. But it goes something like this and it will quick format.

Thanks for the help!