How to Format my Drive?

[Guybrush2]

I bought a IBM 60GB Harddrive a year or so ago, used it for about a day and took it out of my computer (no data was ever put on it). Today, I bought a Firewire Enclosure for back and transfer and put the 60GB harddrive in it. It spins and everything seems to be working, but Windows XP Pro isn't recognizing the drive. Under the device manager is lists: Disk Drive with an !. It says no drivers are installed. Is there something I'm missing here?

I'm thinking that reformating the drive will hepl, but I should be able to do that in Windows XP right?

Any help would greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[wolluf]

didn't your firewire enclosure come with drivers fro XP?
any on manufacturere's website, if not?

 

[Bossbambos]

Ok it looks like the dvive is OK to make it visable on my computer to this:

Right click on my computer and choose manage, on the left hand pane click disk management, then on the right hand pane at the bottom where it says disk 1 or disk! right click and choose import foreign disk.

 

[Guybrush2]

No, it didn't come with any drivers. It said that the Windows XP Mass Storage Device drivers should cover it. I then tried hooking up a plain old CD-Rom to see if would recognize that. It did, but it took F o r e v e r for it to see it, and I never got any of the data off the CD either. The system would just lock.

I'll give Bossbambos idea a shot when I get home tonight.

I also hooked the 60GB drive back up to my computer and formated it. (Though I'm havnig a tough time formatting it for NTFS.) I'm not sure how important that is on a portable hard drive anytway though. If it is: let me know!

 

[Guybrush2]

Still didn't work. I did what Boss said and tried to "import foreign disc." However, my disk was not listed. It had a big X on it and said unreadable. I'm thinking about taking this enclosure back, but I really want to be sure.

Any more ideas or suggsetions?

 

[explode]

the exclamation definitely meant the system recognised the drive. only that the drivers did not configure. in device manager choose this disk uninstall. remove and reconnect the same and cold boot the computer. since it is XP it should reconfigure the device. In case if it doesnt find the device driver it will prompt you to insert disk. but the X that you mention in the latest post is that it is a disabled device.if it is red x then go ahead and try enabling the device from device manager.

formatting is not essentially required in this case. but if you are doing it for XP, then NTFS [not the quick ntfs] is the best and should go ahead right. dont forget to delete all partitions and then formatting the unpartitioned space if you are planning a clean reinstallation. Portable hard drives are as normal and easy to work on as a desktop. do post back if you have any issues while doing this. the most important in portables performance is defrag and disk cleanup.

 

[explode]

hey you can also visit support.dell.com .

it may ask you for a service tag. just select any kind of system if yours is not a DELL one and click on sign in for standard support. since it is a portable choose any inspiron or latitude system.

just type in XP format in the search box and search. also if you want you can type in XP clean reinstallation and look out. they have the best knowledge base. but make sure you follow an order while installing drivers after installing XP. if your laptop has chipsets, let the chipset drivers be installed first. then the video drivers, audio, input device, nic or modem. if you dont follow the order it sometimes doesnt work properly.

you can also visit support.microsoft.com and search for XP with any key words. also the best MS XP articles can be found at

http://www.kbalertz.com

. just click on hottech and then choose XP in this site