Sees HD but wont assign a letter!

[Ashton]

I have a 40GB HD I want to install. in my CelleronM 2.93 box with 1024mb ram, XP sp2.

I have an external IDE->USB that lets me plug IDE drives into my USB port, making htem portable (exlcuding the large size)

I set the drive to "master" and put it in the case. Windows tells me I have new hardware when I plug it in, I go through a half dozen screens of accepting drivers, etc.

I go to "my computer" and all I ahve are my A/C/D drives... I pull up device manager, and it showed both HDs, but shows the 40gb as "uninicialized" (sp?) and either "unformated" or "format: NA"

So, I thought, maybe my DVD-rw and my primary HD are both set to 'master' so this one cant get in the chain. I pull out the HD, switch it to slave and put it in.

this time it wont show the HD at all!

I have had trouble with this external case before, especially wth maxtor drives (this drive is a hitachi) so I figured, maybe this drive had a similar chip/code/etc. So I took it out of hte case, powered off my PC and installed it normally

I power the PC up, go through installation, but dont see the HD at all! (it's still in 'slave' mode). So, I power it down, switch the HD to 'master' and reboot. I have to go through the install again, and it shows up in the Device Manager, but nowhere else! Just like with the case, I can get no drive letter, it's uninitialized (sp?) and it's unformatted.

HELP! I have like 500mb left on my current drive and need to get this second one working ASAP if at all possible!

Thanks in advance,
Ash

[Mak]

Right click on My Computer-->Manage-->Disk Management

Find the disk, right click on it and hit "initialize disk"

[Ashton]

Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!

That did it, Thanks!