Installing new HD

[CEV]

Hi, I just purchased a new Seagate 400 GB HD from Best Buy. I will be putting it in an external enclosure. Since it is a brand new retail drive, is there anything I need to doublecheck or do or can I just install it in the enclosure and hit the power button on the enclosure and begin to copy files over to it?

Thanks,

CEV
WinXP Pro
3.2 Ghz
1 GB DDR

 

[RallyMaster]

Make sure the interfaces are correct? If the drive uses SATA, you better not be putting an IDE drive in there. Make sure your comp supports whatever the enclosure uses to connect to the computer (if you don't have FireWire and the enclosure uses FireWire, then it's time for a FireWire card...). Otherwise, if it's USB, you'll fine.

 

[CEV]

No need to format the drive to prepare it?

Thanks,

CEV

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: CEV
No need to format the drive to prepare it?

Thanks,

CEV

Yeah, you'll still need to format it. Once you hook up the new drive and enclosure, wait for the computer to recognize it as an external hard drive. Once all the new-USB-device action is done in the task manager, go into the Computer Management in Windows XP and use the Disk Manager to set up the partition and format the drive.

With a 400GB drive, you'll need to set it up as NTFS, or partition it into smaller chunks if you want to use FAT32. There is a case to be made for using FAT32 on an external drive, though, as that file system can be read by not only XP and 2000, but also Linux, OS X and older versions of Windows. NTFS can only be natively read by XP and 2000 (although a lot of Linux distros I've tried seem to be configured to read the file system from the get go), so it can be a pain to use on an external that is being hooked up to a lot of different systems.

 

[CEV]

Thanks!!

 

[whitelight]

if the drive is IDE, make sure you follow the instructions from the external enclosure for the correct jumper settings. i think it's usually set to cable select.