External enclosure problems

[skydream]

I just bought a external enclosure online and my friend just gave me his old working harddrive out of his hp computer. I put the harddrive into the external enclosure which connects to the hard drive via ide and uses usb to connect to the computer. When I power on the external harddrive and plug it into my computer I hear a sound which is when you plug a usb in you will hear it, but when I look around My Computer I don't see the new drive. I'm wondering is this a problem with my external enclosure or I have to do something with the harddrive first.

 

[g-paw]

If there is nothing on it you want, I'd format it for starters, you'll have to install it since the computer is recognizing.

 

[nmarchini]

Hi, I am assuming you are using windows XP,

right click on my computer and select manage.

under the storage section select disk management. You should then either get prompted to import an unrecognised disk or the drive will be present but without a drive letter in which case you will need to assign one.

Good Luck

 

[skydream]

Yes, I'm using window xp, so I have to put the drive in my computer and format it using xp and install xp on it to enable it?

 

[nmarchini]

You don't need to instal XP on it to use it. Just follow the instructions above and it shoudl work.