External HDD format question?

[willr]

I am looking at buying a USB 2.0 2.5" HDD Enclosure. I would be taking the old 6.5gb HDD out a Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop running Win98. The seller of the enclosure states: "New 2.5" Drives need to be partitioned before Windows will recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter." The screen on my laptop is broken so I can't format the drive while it's in the laptop. If I remove it as-is, install it in the enclosure, and hook it up to my WinXP PC will it be recognized? And can I easily reformat it?

-Thanks

 

[unhappy_mage]

I am looking at buying a USB 2.0 2.5" HDD Enclosure. I would be taking the old 6.5gb HDD out a Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop running Win98. The seller of the enclosure states: "New 2.5" Drives need to be partitioned before Windows will recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter." The screen on my laptop is broken so I can't format the drive while it's in the laptop. If I remove it as-is, install it in the enclosure, and hook it up to my WinXP PC will it be recognized? And can I easily reformat it?

-Thanks

It'll probably show up in drive management to let you format it from windows. Should work fine. The worst case scenario is you have to get a 40 to 44 pin adapter to let you plug the drive in as a normal disk (rather than USB) and format it that way before putting it in the enclosure.

 

[willr]

Thanks for the info, i'll give it a shot.

 

[djnes]

It should be recognized without any formatting. It should show up as a free drive letter, and be visible in Drive Management.