[l3ights]

I had an external SATA drive, which i took apart and installed into my comp, connected power lead and sata lead to motherboard, turn on computer and went to my computer to see if it picked it up and it didn't, went to control panel and then device manager and the drive is there,

so it shows there but how do i use it??

Do i have to format it 1st or not?

I know there is stuff on the drive, but not sure what is on there,

I'm running on vista

Any idea's??

[Aftershock]

ive not got vista running so i had to check google for instructions on how to get to it but the thing you need is the drive manager.

--google instructions for vista--

1. Click on the Start Button and right click on computer and select Manage.
2. Expand the Storage section and select Disk Management.

from there you can format the drive and select the drive letter for your new drive

[spot]

The control panel administration tools has a disk manager. If it says you have a formatted drive there, perhaps all it needs is one or more drive letters assigning to the partitions.

What do you see when you go there?