Hey guys,

I have a 250GB Maxtor Hard drive (ATA 133) that I want to use as an external hard drive. Originally it was installed as a network drive using D-Links DSM-G600 but that piece of equipment has malfunctioned and I'm in the process of getting it replaced. In any case this hard drive has a good amount of data on it that I don't want to loose (approx 300 CD's). I figured I would buy an external hard drive enclosure and access the media via the USB port. Unfortunately I can't get the computer to recognize the drive. Windows XP (SP2) sees the new hardware and installs it, but for some reason I can't get it to initialize the drive according to Disc Manager. When I initialize it, nothing happens. The manufacturer of the hard drive enclosure said that it was either a hardware conflict, or that I need to manually set the drive letter which I don't know how to do. The disk enclosure is Coolmax HD-360B. Do you guys have any suggestions? Thanks!

You might try uninstalling and reinstalling the Disc Manager program.

Dependint on the Disk management Program that might not be possible.

And welcome to the friendliest forum on earth, where the only time you see RTFM is when we say we don't do that...erm, back to business.

If the disk management you are talking about is accessed by right-clicking my Computer and clicking manage then we're halfway there. Can you see the drive in device manager under "disk drives" or "usb devices"?

Yes, the disk management I'm talking about is accessed by right clicking on the my computer icon. Yes, I can see the drive under disk drives after clicking on device manager.

Ok could you look for any yellow exclamation marks?

Also, if you go into drive management, you would want to look for the usb drive in the partition view right click the partition and select properties, or "change drive letter" and select a drive letter that isn't taken. If you want your hard drives to have consecutive driver letters (eg c:\ d:\ and e:\) you may have to re-assign the drive letters to your optical drives first.

I found the references to the USB port and hard drive in the device manager screen and there are no yellow exclamation points for either. Actually if you right click and go to properties for either device the status window states that both devices are functioning properly. Also there are no options to assign a drive letter.