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St Steve
4th January 2008, 17:47
Ive just bought a hard drive to use in an external case to connect to a laptop with a usb cable. How do I format the drive without attaching inside a pc. The laptop recignises a mass storage device but doesn't give it a drive letter.

alf wayliner
4th January 2008, 18:40
Do you want to boot from it or not?

St Steve
4th January 2008, 18:59
No just want to use it has a storage drive for pics etc

Supersaint
4th January 2008, 19:08
You have to set the little plastic thing at the back to slave instead of primary.

Boot up off your other hard drive which should be set as primary then delete windows off you the slave version if you want.

Reacher
4th January 2008, 19:18
You have to set the little plastic thing at the back to slave instead of primary.

Boot up off your other hard drive which should be set as primary then delete windows off you the slave version if you want.

Cant remember you being that good with computers at school Swift ;) ;)

Supersaint
4th January 2008, 19:35
Cant remember you being that good with computers at school Swift ;) ;)

All learned from Morris this pal ;) them BBC micro's had me stumped:D

St Steve
4th January 2008, 19:37
the drive is empty brand new so theres no operating system on it.

alf wayliner
4th January 2008, 20:11
http://www.jakeludington.com/hadware_upgrades/20040909_diy_external_hard_drive.html

Shakespeare
4th January 2008, 20:55
You installed your software?

St Steve
4th January 2008, 21:04
all i want is to put a hitachi 160gb hard drive into an external enclosure(the old drive has died). its recognise has a mass storage device in the hardware manager under the usb, but windows disk manager and powerquecerst does not ognise it as another drive to format. i trhink i'l just attach it the downstairs pc as a slave and format it that way unless people know different

Two Wheeled Saint
4th January 2008, 21:48
I connected one to my PC then just copied my C drive to it. It took an hour or so but it backed up now.

RedVee Admin
4th January 2008, 23:53
Does it show up in My Computer?

Right click, properties, format?

SodIt the Hedgehog
6th January 2008, 01:18
In my IcyBox USB drive caddy I set my drive to master, not slave. I take it you're using XP by the way?