[Brilliant Ken]

Hi there! I have just gotten for myself a new external hard disk, but am still confused over some issues with it. Windows does recognize it alright, but the drive does not appear in My Computer. I understand that partitioning and formatting is necessary before being able to use a new hard disk, but I am totally lost and confused. Partition first, then format? What software can I use? (freeware preferably) Can I use fdisk? My drive is 160GB in size.
Thank you for enlightening.

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You need to partition the disk before you can "format" it. It used to be that formatting the disk applied to the whole disk, but M$ warped that term to mean creating the filesystem.

fdisk no longer exists in XP, there is a disk management tool, which is hard to find. You can use the help page to find it. I created a link on the desktop because I got annoyed. I normally use Linux, so I can not post how to find it right now.

There are versions of Linux that you can also use (Knoppix, DSL OS, etc.), but since you are running XP, it makes sense to use the tools there.

[Kemasa]

You need to partition the disk before you can "format" it. It used to be that formatting the disk applied to the whole disk, but M$ warped that term to mean creating the filesystem.

fdisk no longer exists in XP, there is a disk management tool, which is hard to find. You can use the help page to find it. I created a link on the desktop because I got annoyed. I normally use Linux, so I can not post how to find it right now.

There are versions of Linux that you can also use (Knoppix, DSL OS, etc.), but since you are running XP, it makes sense to use the tools there.

[dsenette]

if windows recognizes it..you can check in diskmanager (right click my computer > manage > disk manager) if the drive shows up there..you can format it..partition it and mark it as active...also....if this is an external drive that you purchased as an external drive (as in....all one unit bought from the store this way...not an enclosure and a seperate drive that you put together)....if it needed to be formatted and partitioned...they should have sent a disk with it to accomplish this task