Dummy 101: DIY Ext HDD - Tip #1: Formatting the Drive

So it is my first time putting together my very own external HDD!!! It was a wonderful and excited 2.5 hours journey filled with surprises!!! : P And everything worked in the end! Yeah!

So once you have assembled the HDD and the case together, you plug in the USB, and you see nothing! You went to 'My Computer' and see no drives! What's wrong??? It is very likely that your HDD is not formatted and hence WinXP will not be able to understand/recognise its content (since it's not in a particular file system format). In this case you will need to format your drive first!

Formatting you HDD:
You may use any tools you like to format your hard drive. If you are unsure...ask your friend, Google! : )

For me, I've asked my friend to format the drive for me via Disk Utility which is available on Mac, formatting the drive to MSDos format. I was also successful in using Partition Magic (for Windows) to format my drive!

What happens if your drive doesn't seem to be recognised by WinXP?
At the least, no matter if you have formatted or not formatted your drive or not....WinXP should be able to recognise the newly attached USB hardware! If you can't see the drives on 'My Computer', check the following:

1. The little attached hardware icon is shown in the notification area
   
   
2. Go to 'Device Manager', select disk drives, and then go to the furtherest right button on the toolbar which will allow you to 'Scan for hardware changes' (see pic below).
   
   
   After your refresh, if there's nothing wrong with your hard drive, you should be able to see the attached external HDD (as seen in the pic).
   
   
3. (If you use Partition Manager) After you have done step 2, you should be able to see your external HDD as another 'disk'. Then you can partition your HDD in the usual way from here on! : )
   

*P.S. - Of course thanks and appreciations must go out to my friends who had given me advise in buying the HDD and those 'friends who got my awesome ( hehe j/k) looking case for me....and of course to that 'friend' who convinced and helped me to put together my very FIRST ext HDD!!! : )