Hard drive from dvd recorder..laptop cannot find it.

[lostboy87]

I have just bought a casing for the hard drive that i took out of my old dvd recorder.I have fitted it all turned it on and plugged in by usb.I t says that it is installed and ready but i cannot find it anywhere! I have clicked on computer but it doesnt come under removable storage.When i click on the safely remove hardware it comes up with the name of it and that it is a mass storage device.I have no clue what else to do...please help.

[ChuckFickens]

it probably hasn't got a standard windows partition on the drive.

Right click on my computer and select manage, then select disk management and then in the bottom right pane you should be able to see the disk, if you right click on it you should have the option to create a new partition, select that and it will create a partition on it.

Once that is done you have to format the drive so right click on it again and select format. as it's an external drive select FAT32 from the drop down menu that says file system on the format box and click OK


be VERY careful when doing the above that you are definitely clicking on the correct drive, if you do the above on your system drive by mistake you will lose everything on it

[sweetpea...!]

Just want to say thanks Chuck for advising me to buy more memory for my Vista - it works perfectly now.

[lostboy87]

When i right click it says properties,new simple volume and help.It say it is unalocated!

[ChuckFickens]

new simple volume then

Sorry it's been so long since I've had to make a partition with windows disk management :)

[lostboy87]

It is formating now,when it is done should it be ok to use and will it show up?
Thanks for your help.

[ChuckFickens]

Yep once it's all done it should show as another drive in my computer.

No worries

And no worries also sweetpea :)