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I have two 40GB USB drives sitting at home ready to use for backing-up my data. However, I can't seem to see them in My Computer. I'm sure in the past I simply plugged in a USB drive and it showed up in My Computer, but these ones don't.

Do I need to do something special to them in order for them to work, as I think they may be formatted for Macs? This is because they come from a place which uses lots of Macs and I've tried both the hard drives on the Mac in the house and they work fine. Do I need to format it for Windows or something?

Thanks.

The Mac drives are formatted differently than PC drives, of course if your drives were formatted for PC, the Mac could read them. With additional software you could read the Mac drives directly So make your call and figure out what you want to do next

I want to format it for PC. But how exactly do I do that, because I can't right-click it and select format as I can't see it. Do I need to boot using the XP CD or something?

Hockster wrote:

I want to format it for PC. But how exactly do I do that, because I can't right-click it and select format as I can't see it. Do I need to boot using the XP CD or something?

Even if they are formatted differently, WinXP should detect the drives (whether they are usable or not is a whole different issue).

dmitriylm wrote:

Hockster wrote:

I want to format it for PC. But how exactly do I do that, because I can't right-click it and select format as I can't see it. Do I need to boot using the XP CD or something?

Even if they are formatted differently, WinXP should detect the drives (whether they are usable or not is a whole different issue).

Yeah, you're right. I plugged in the hard drive and it detects the new hard drive and it shows up in the Device Manager. I still can't seem to use it though. What is the best way to format it for PC?

Hockster wrote:

dmitriylm wrote:

Hockster wrote:

I want to format it for PC. But how exactly do I do that, because I can't right-click it and select format as I can't see it. Do I need to boot using the XP CD or something?

Even if they are formatted differently, WinXP should detect the drives (whether they are usable or not is a whole different issue).

Yeah, you're right. I plugged in the hard drive and it detects the new hard drive and it shows up in the Device Manager. I still can't seem to use it though. What is the best way to format it for PC?

What does device manager say about them? Are they assigned a drive letter?

dmitriylm wrote:

Hockster wrote:

dmitriylm wrote:

Hockster wrote:

I want to format it for PC. But how exactly do I do that, because I can't right-click it and select format as I can't see it. Do I need to boot using the XP CD or something?

Even if they are formatted differently, WinXP should detect the drives (whether they are usable or not is a whole different issue).

Yeah, you're right. I plugged in the hard drive and it detects the new hard drive and it shows up in the Device Manager. I still can't seem to use it though. What is the best way to format it for PC?

What does device manager say about them? Are they assigned a drive letter?

It appears in the section "Disk drives", along with my main hard drive. I don't know if it has been assigned a drive letter or not, it's not in My Computer anyway.

Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

You should be able to see the drives and format them there.

atidriverssuck wrote:

Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management

You should be able to see the drives and format them there.

Yep, the drive is working fine now. I went into Disk Management and had to first initialize the disk. Then I just selected create a new partition and that assigned it a new drive letter and formatted it to NTFS.

Thanks.