I have an external case that you can plug a 2.5" hard drive into and then connect it via USB to a PC creating an external drive. The case works fine with other drives i have tested it it so think the problem lies with this particular drive. The drive appears in device manager as fully working with my two other internal drives but does not appear in My Computer. Is this becuase it is not formatted correctly? Can't format in Windows becuase its not in My Computer and i dont have partition magic so i tried to use FDSIK in DOS but as its a USB drive it is not detected in DOS? Any ideas, the only driver that seems to work with the case in windows seems to be USBSTOR.sys as it dosn't like to standard genuide.sys that windows keep recomending if thats any help? Any ideas appreciated, Ryan

What about W2K's disk management tool. It's under control panel > admin tools > computer management. Maybe the drive appears there?

Good idea but when i select disk mamagement the external drive just keeps making the accessing noise and the access light flashes but nothing is displayed apart from the tooltip "Acessing Disk Management Services". Maybe i need to load the USB driver in DOS?

i had a similar prob with external maxtor xt5000 in both usb and 1394. drive showed up but entire system slowed up whenever i tried to bring up the properties of the drive or do anything with it. drive spun up and windows would sit there, turned out to be a failing drive. try another hdd to find out whether its the drive or the caddy.