Using a hard drive as a USB flash drive

[PCVirgin]

I have two notebook Hitachi Travelstar hard drive disks that I want to use as USB flash drives.

I have two hard drive cases with USB attachments.

I enclosed each hard drive to a case and attached the USB cable and then connected to the PC. Unfortunately the PC cannot see either drive. Even when I try "Add new hardware".

Do I need other software before I can get the PC to recognise the external har drive/s?

 

[wahnula]

Go to Disk Management (Start->right-click My Computer->Manage->Disk Management) and partition and format the drive. Please MAKE SURE IT IS THE CORRECT DRIVE before formatting!!!

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[PCVirgin]

It does not show here.

Any other ideas?

 

[vacunita]

Make sure the hard drives actually work, and are correctly plugged in the cases.

Windows should automatically detect and setup the drives when you connect them.

Do the cases require a power source other than the USB cable?

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[paparazi]

Drive jumpers should be set as master make sure they are not set to cable select or other.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[AP81]

How big are the drives? laptop drives over 40GB generally require a power source...

 

[PCVirgin]

Taking points one at a time.

1) The jumpers maybe set as "master" as they have come out of laptops. Is resetting them easy?

2) They are both 40GB in size.

 

[paparazi]

Maybe set as master!!
Many manufacturers set to CS (cable sellect) when building, don't know why but when placed in USB caddies they definately need setting as master.
Go to the manufacturers website to see if they have jumpers and how they are set (the makers have good info on their different models and how they are setup) this coud also prove useful to download free utilities etc that might help.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.