Thread: How do you Setup External Hard Drive Enclosure?

Gday,

There is no setting up as such, besides installing a hard drive into the unit if it doesn't have a drive installed.

If you have a bare hard drive and the external enclosure separate, then it is simply a matter of removing two (usually) tiny screws and sliding the cover out/off, plug in the bare hard drive, if its a 3.5" drive which it sounds like it is, there will be 4 screws to hold the drive in the chassis. Put the cover back on, put the tiny screws back in.

Then it is just plug and play, no driver installation is necessary. (Plug AC power in first and switch unit on, the drive will spin up, then plug in usb cable.)

Cheers

Thanks, but I have done all that and windows 7 will not Initialise the drive, I need to know what to do from this point on, Thanks, Regards Frank.

Ok, sorry. Should just be plug and play!

Try this one:

Control Panel
System & Security
Create and format hard disk partitions

This will load Disk management. (Or in win 7 just click start button and type disk management)

It will list all hard drives connected, formatted or not.

If your drive is listed then all good, you can format the drive or create partitions etc. Hopefully it is a blank new drive you have??? If it is an old drive with data on it you will of course lose everything if going down this path.

If you format the drive tick the box "quick format" or it will take forever!

If it is not listed, then there must be another problem, eg, problem with USB port (unlikely) or problem with external enclosure....

If it is an old drive with data on it, the assigned drive letter may be conflicting with a letter already in use. eg, D or E. You can re-assign a drive letter to anything not used.

Let me know how you go.

Cheers.

This may be a stupid question but you DO actually have a drive inside that enclosure don't you? :-)

If so, plug it in to the PC, right click "my computer"and choose "manage"
Then go to "storage"
If the drive is brand new and unused it should automatically tell you the drive needs to be prepared and will raise a wizard which will allow you to do so.

Another possibility is that the drive letter for that device has been "robbed" by a network drive, card reader etc.

Heh... See above... Lol

Great minds think alike?

Can anyone give me any ideas on how I give this Hard Drive in the external enc. a different drive letter.
I have done everything else you have said, the ext. encl. is shown as disk 5 with a little red cross, right click on it and a box comes up says select, which I do, hit OK and another box says disk not ready, Help, Regards Frank.

Is this a brand new and unused drive that you have fitted to the enclosure, or has it been used before?
You should be able to change the letter through the same right click menu you have already found. (in storage management)
If you can't, drive may be faulty - you'll need some one to check it for you.