hi
this will be my first time doing a sata install,

i put the drive in, plugged it up, cut on my pc, and bam drive detected.. but it dosent show up as free space.. it dosent show up anywhere except device manager, and that safely remove hardware thing.. (asus)

do i need to format it like old school drives?

the western digital site says

3. Attach the power supply cable.
4. Attach the SATA interface cable.
5. Mount the drive in a 3.5" device bay. Use either the four bottom screws or four of the side mounting screws to support the drive.
6. Close the computer and turn it on.
7. Use the Data Lifeguard Utilities, included in your kit or downloadable here, to complete the installation and transfer your data from one drive to another.


but since i ordered the bare drive.. i dont have a kit..

can i make this drive work without lifegaurd?

thanks
-josh

Quote: Originally Posted by phantommaggot hi this will be my first time doing a sata install, i put the drive in, plugged it up, cut on my pc, and bam drive detected.. but it dosent show up as free space.. it dosent show up anywhere except device manager, and that safely remove hardware thing.. (asus) do i need to format it like old school drives? the western digital site says 3. Attach the power supply cable. 4. Attach the SATA interface cable. 5. Mount the drive in a 3.5" device bay. Use either the four bottom screws or four of the side mounting screws to support the drive. 6. Close the computer and turn it on. 7. Use the Data Lifeguard Utilities, included in your kit or downloadable here, to complete the installation and transfer your data from one drive to another. but since i ordered the bare drive.. i dont have a kit.. can i make this drive work without lifegaurd? thanks -josh

does this work?
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

Quote: Originally Posted by phantommaggot hi this will be my first time doing a sata install, i put the drive in, plugged it up, cut on my pc, and bam drive detected.. but it dosent show up as free space.. it dosent show up anywhere except device manager, and that safely remove hardware thing.. (asus) do i need to format it like old school drives? the western digital site says 3. Attach the power supply cable. 4. Attach the SATA interface cable. 5. Mount the drive in a 3.5" device bay. Use either the four bottom screws or four of the side mounting screws to support the drive. 6. Close the computer and turn it on. 7. Use the Data Lifeguard Utilities, included in your kit or downloadable here, to complete the installation and transfer your data from one drive to another. but since i ordered the bare drive.. i dont have a kit.. can i make this drive work without lifegaurd? thanks -josh

You'll need to format it
If the disk isn't showing up in windows explorer (assuming you have XP installed)

Right click on My computer
Select "manage"
go to the "storage" menu (on the left hand side of the window)
Click "disk management"

This will bring up a list of all the installed drives on your system - you can assign your new disk a drive letter and format it with a right click on the drive info in the window

Hope that does the trick

sweet,
i just wanted to make shure i didnt have to use the software..

as mandatory software makes me sad..

and.. formatting lol
ima tard.. i should have known