I would like to thank those of you that have replied. Last night I was poking around a little and think I stumbled on the solution. Assuming it is the correct solution it is unbelievable that it was so easy. Unfortunately with no documentation it took about 12 hours to find it. And that was by chance and not by documentation. I have posted my solution to USENET under rec.photo.digital. I will post the recent letter at the bottom of this letter.

First regarding some of the recent suggestions, I have Win 98 SE and have USB (not USB2) although the drive enclosure is USB2/firwire. It should be and is currently running backwards compatable. The drive was UNFORMATTED and a suggestion that I would have to anyone thinking of buying parts or hardware for upgrades is to make sure you are getting consumer packaging or are comfortable with your abilities, experience and resources before buying at discounts. I saved a bit on the enclosure and the drive but found that while the enclosure was a no brainer, the drive was in a plain brown box with no instructions or software. I guess it was intended for those who already have setups for installing the drives in other peoples computers or for building systems. It is identical to the consumer drive just doesn't have the documentation or software.

As for John' comments about the pictures, I do. I have about 500 pictures taken with my digital camera around LV and about 200 Chip Pics. I also do some AstroPhotography and have about another 500 or more of those. All totaled, after copying those to the new drive they took up 600meg. That is about 10% of my notebooks HD. I haven't deleted them yet. I am waiting to plug the drive into another computer and confirm it is operating and compatable and that the photos are secure. All together I have almost 2000 photos.

To Mark Heiman, I am running Win 98 Second Edition. The drive in my situation is an internal drive but I have it installed in an external enclosure. I did this because, A.) it is on a notebook and a drive that big won't fit internally, and B.) I wanted ability to move it from computer to computer. Internally installed I don't think I would have had much difficulty as the computer would have located it more easilly. However, mounted externally it wasn't, for some reason, treating it the same way. 98 located and recognized the hardware with no problem and installed the drivers but it would not recognize it in the Window Explorer.

Following is the post to USENET. I apologize for the length of this but through my browser couldn't get a full address to provide a link. If anyone is having a similar problem you can check that thread. The header should have info that you can use to locate the thread It was still getting a few replies to my solution as of this morning. Now, hopefully, I have helped others by creating some documentation for this solution so others don't have to go through what I have. If anyone here has some advanced computer experience and has any comments on my solution I would appreciate them before I decide to purge the original files from the internal HD on the notbook.

Thanks again for your help.

Subject: Re: HELP Installing New Hard Drive for Photo Storage
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From: wmas1960@aol.com (WMAS 1960)
Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital
Date: 18 Aug 2002 08:24:26 GMT
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Message-ID:

Thanks for your suggestion. I would also like to thank everyone who has
offered some thoughts. Since posting my query, I did a little more poking
around and found that in Control Panel> System> Device Manager> Disk Drives, I
selected the Baracuda drive(listed by model number) and looked in Settings and
noticed there was a selection for REMOVABLE. I thought that sounded logical
since, although it is a hard drive, it is in an external enclosure and can be
removed from the system. Therefore, I tried it. By selecting that, I was then
able to assign a drive letter or letters for that drive. I chose G. Then I
notice that it appeared on the Directory Tree and it was now recognized on the
Task Bar. Previously, there was an icon on the task bar but when clicked on
the icon indicated no drive found.

Anyways, I clicked on G in the file tree and Windows Explorer told me it was
not formatted, even though my brother had plugged it into his XP machine and
formatted using NTFS. Windows Explorer then asked if I wanted to format. I
selected FULL and then formatted (Reformatted) the drive. I was not asked
about partitioning. I assume that the drive is then formatted with one 80gig
partition. After formatting, Windows Explorer recommended doing a "Thourough
Scandisk" I started one but after 30 minutes 24,000 sectors of
24,445,000(rounded) sectors had been scanned. Doing some calculations I
figured it would take 36 to 42 hours to scan this drive. So, considering it is
new, I gave up.

I have copied all my digital photos onto the drive (550 meg), about 10% of the
main drive, and that took about 17 minutes through standard USB. The pictures
are accessable on my notebook and through Photoshop 5(?). I clicked on G and
checked properties and it is formatted as Fat32. I am going to wait on erasing
the photos from the 6 gig (main) drive till I can confirm by hooking the drive
to another machine that they are readable and safe. Now I can take my CF cards
and my CDs that I have been dumping the CF images on for the last few months
and consolidate everything together.

If anybody has any other thoughts about what I did or recommendations or
comments that I should know of before I purge the old files I would certainly
welcome them.

The only concerns that I have, immediately, right now, is if it is necessary or
advisable to partition the drive? and if the projected time to scan or do
maintenance on the drive is correct. 42+ hours seems like a lot. I do know
from my experience recently with my 6 gig, single partitioned, drive it took
about 12 hours to defrag. Considering that maybe 42 hours for 80gigs is
normal. I don't know.

Also, had I selected, for example, Start G End J for the drive letters on the
Settings page? Would that have partitioned the drive in 4 equal partitions?
That could be good to know.

Again, thanks for all the assistance.