These procedures require you to open your external hard drive enclosure to
make the drive inside bootable. This will void your warranty if it is still in
effect.*
Disconnect power adapter and USB cable. You will need to have the following
items available before continuing:
If this is a 2.5 drive you will need a IDE adapter that will reduce the
size of the pin connectors from the normal 80 Pin IDE cable to the 3.5/2.5 80
Pin cable. Your local electronics store may have them or you can find them on
the computer parts web pages.
You can use either a desktop or a laptop computer. If you use a laptop
computer the drive has to be the same size as the one in the computer, do not
insert a 2.5 drive into a 3.5 inch drive bay, you will mess up the connector
pins!
If you do have a different size drive in the laptop vs. the external drive
then your only choice is to use a desktop.
This may seem like a lot of work but the only way you can
partition and format the drive is through the IDE or SATA
interface and not the USB connector.
Open the drive enclosure, remove the drive from the enclosure and install it
in your desktop or laptop.
It is important that you test you work, one to insure the drive will
function and that it will start the computer, to do this with a normal desktop
you can either disconnect the power or interface cable or disable the boot drive
in the BIOS settings.
With a laptop you can test your external drive either by
selecting it at boot up (when the laptop boots you have a keystroke that will
get into the boot device menu) or leaving the internal hard drive out when you
complete the procedure.
*As I pointed out at the top of this article you may void your warranty if you
remove the drive from the enclosure. I do not take any responsibility for any of
these instructions use at your own risk.
This site contains a lot of information. As
with any publication not all information is available due to space, time, or
subject constraints.
If you have a question that you did not find the answer
on this web site you a can
ask your question here and we will endeavor to get you the most up to date
answer possible!