New Portable Hard Drive Formatting

So I just got a new WD Scorpio Black HD and put it in a DeLock Enclosure. I plugged it in using a power over eSATA cable and I can find it in my Devices but it does not show up as a storage device under my computer. Any ideas???

 

Type computer management in the start menu, and when it comes up click on it. Go to disk management and you might see your disk. It probably needs to be formatted or something.

 

I can find it in device management but there is no option to format or give the drive a letter. Here is the only way I can see it.

 

Right Click on Disk 1 and select Initialize.

Then, Right Click on the Unallocated (shaded area) and click format.

Good luck.

 

you need to create a partition in order to format it to something. since its a western digital you could use the western digital tools but windows should let you do it if you right click the drive there should be a create new volume or something similar. after that you format it (windows will probably limit you to either ntfs or exfat)

 

Than you so much! I had to right click and use "New Volume" to format the drive. Sorry about the multiple posts.

 

cazper37,

glad you got it figured out (with some help).

Sorry I just said 'format' and forgot to say 'New Volume'.

Man, I must be getting old or something. I've only done this about a million times! lol....

 

No problem, I also dont know the new terms that have changed since XP

 

Ok new question, I don't want to have to constantly move things over to the portable drive, so do you know how to move the "Libraries" Folder over to the Portable Drive? That way all of my media and documents will be put on my external drive.

Thanks

 

That will only work if you 'Always' connect the external when you turn on the computer.

If you don't, Windows won't like it too much - I don't know what it will do, but it won't be pretty.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html


And scroll down to:

"Thankfully, all we need to do in Win 7 (and Vista) to automatically save to our D: drive is:"


But again, keep in mind that that post was written with the intent that the folders are moved/pointed to a different partition that will always be available to the O/S whenever it boots up.


Oh! You can use the Homegroup feature of Windows 7 to automatically locate the documents/images/music/videos on the external HD when the external HD is connected, but you will still need to manually move the files there in the first place.

Good luck.