MaverickUK

Hi,

If it's new, then you will as you said need to format and partition the drive before you can use it and before Windows will recgonise it under My Computer. To do this, follow instructions as below.

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management. From here, you will need to click on the left pane of the disk you will be formatting, right click and choose initialise disk, then ok.

Now, right click the right part of the display - the partition display area, and then select "New Partition". This should start up the New Partition Wizard, then choose primary partition - obviously do not change the partition size unless you wish to create more than one partition for the drive. You should then choose a drive letter of your choice, or let Windows choose one for you.

I would suggest you use NTFS file system for the drive. You should also choose the default unit allocation, unless you wish to make it higher - this will be more adequate for bigger files (if you will be using this storage as a stoage for music and such).

The device should now appear healthy under Disk Management.

Regards,
Nick.