New SSD in external case not showing in My Computer

[WhipperSnapper]

I want to format and partition a brand new 128 GB SSD drive. It's an OCZ Vertex 4:

http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology...s=ocz+vertex+4

I have it in an external HD case connected by USB 2.0. It shows up correctly in the Device Manager and shows as an OCZ drive the correct capacity, but there's no sign of it in My Computer. I tried it on both a Vista laptop and my Win XP Pro SP3 desktop. (It's in the external drive case so that I can properly align and partition it on the Vista laptop before installing in the XP desktop.)

Am I doing something wrong here? I don't see any options to partition the drive.

 

[Coup27]

Open disk management and partition and format it. Disks will not show in my computer until they have a partition on them with a file system.

It would have been much easier though for you to put the SSD into the machine you are going to install XP on, boot a Vista or 7 installation disc and use the partition editor in the installer to make all of your aligned partitions. Then reboot with the XP CD in and install into one of those partitions.