[buchanan]

hi guys.

just got the hdd and enclosure, got it put together, put it into my pc and got some messages in my system tray saying it's ready to use.

doesn't show up in "my computer"

shows up in disk management i right clicked it but no option to format, there was an option to initialize so i did that and now it says it is online but unallocated.

what do i need to do guys, do i need to format? how do i do it?

edit: it also shows up in safely remove hardware

thanks in advance guys i am stuck

[buchanan]

when i right click in disk management it says i can partition, should i do that?

[philthomas]

Yep you need to create a partition and format it.

[buchanan]

cheers phil

[buchanan]

ok

been going strong for a while now and no problems (if it breaks tomorrow i'll let you know)

had my concerns about putting pressure on the intenal parts of the enclosure and the sata connector on the drive because the sata cable (inside the enc. is too long and you have to force the issue to put the thing together but it seems ok.

the enclosure is not the prettiest but neither am i so i'm not bothered that it looks cheap as long as it keeps working. it makes a bit of noise (has a tiny fan) but this doesn't bother me either.

it is very fickle about whether it lets you safely release it (cannot be stopped now, try again later) but you can just turn it off with the (flimsy but functional) on/off switch at the back. but lots of devices seem to be like this (just not as bad but it doesn't matter).

the most annoying thing for me is that i bought the enclosure from svp instead of ebuyer (where i bought the hdd from) just so i could get the usb and esata version, (which ebuyer did not have at the time) which ended up costing me £££ more. it came with a usb cable but not an esata cable which i couldn't see the point of.

all in all, one of the cheapest enclosures out there and pretty good, very easy to put together, and it's nice to know that there is a quality drive in there.