[thoughtsurfer]

I've just bought an external hard drive (Sabrent USB to SATA & IDE) and my computer won't recognize it.

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Have you tried other USB ports on your computer, just to make sure?

Make sure all the connections on the external drive are ok?

[jaxisland]

Have you tried other USB ports on your computer, just to make sure?

Make sure all the connections on the external drive are ok?

[SRX660]

If the HD is not formatted then windows will not see it.If you can find out what the drive is you can use the drive makers utilities to format the drive so windows can see it. WD has the data lifeguard tools, Maxtor has the maxblast software, Seagate uses Seatools, etc. They all have utilities for this.

SRX660

[thoughtsurfer]

Yeah. All the ports have been tried. The machine is making a sound of recognition when I plug in. But, nothing is connecting in my computer. All my USB ports work, because I use them with the printer and flash cards.

[thoughtsurfer]

It did come with a driver disk. When I hit setup on it, it tells me that it's already installed.

[negative_silent]

Did you buy the external HD (as a whole) or did you buy a HD and a external enclosure and install it?

[jaxisland]

I would plug it in and power it on.
Then go Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management and see if it recognizes it there.

If it doesn then right click and format.