An external hard drive may become a necessary item in our ever-increasing computer data driven world. Sooner rather than later you may need an external hard drive to store your digital pictures, music, movies and applications. The good news is that price of external hard drives have fallen as hard drive capacities have risen. You can now purchase a 500 gigabyte model for less than $100 at many computer retailers on the web.
Step 1
Login to your computer as the administrator.
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Step 2
Install the external drive software from the CD that comes with your external hard drive.
Step 3
Use the USB cable that comes with your external hard drive and plug one end of the cable into your hard drive and the freened of the free end of the cable into the USB port in your computer.
Step 4
Give Windows a moment to recognize the external drive and to assign it a drive letter.
Step 5
Go to the "My Computer" icon and double click on it.
Step 6
In the right hand explorer window choose the newly created external drive letter.
Step 7
Right click on the external drive letter and choose "format" from the drop down box.
Step 8
Choose "quick format" from the format options section from the next pop up box.
Step 9
Click the start button.
Step 10
Click the "OK" button in the Format warning box.
Step 11
Click the "OK" button in the "format complete box" to finish the process.
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