I have an external 250 GB USB drive that registers in XP "Disk Management" function as follows: • Volume = D: • Layout = Partition • File System = blank (here is a problem since it should say NTFS) • Status = Healthy (Active) • Capacity = 232.88 GB • Free Space = 232.88 GB • % Free = 100% • Fault Tolerance = No • Overhead = 0% XP Disk Management fails on both Quick and Regular format. Aside from removing the drive from its USB case, attaching it to a PC directly as EIDE and in DOS using FDISK or simply loading a copy of XP (which will likely create an NTFS partition), is there something in XP that I can do to get this drive to work for backup purposes?

"File System = blank (here is a problem since it should say NTFS)" Nothing shows up there if the partition(s) is (are) not already formatted. NTFS will show up there once it has been. When you get a new drive, it is not partitioned or formatted. When you make a partition in XP, formatting is the second part of the process by default. If it has already been formatted, or in any case... Your problem may be a USB connection related one. See response 3 in this: http://www.computing.net/answers/ha... In addition to that, the drivers for the mboard's main chipset must have been loaded in order to make sure your USB controllers are detected correctly. If that doesn't help.... Check your hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... (thanks to Dan Penny for this link:) Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm... If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to.

You make no mention of type of disk in Disk Management. Should say Basic. I suggest you delete the partition and recreate one or more new partitions as desired. Then try formatting. I suggest full format.

OtheHill, I did exactly as you said, and all seems to work. Thanks.

You are welcome.