Need help re: formatting and partitions

[Some Guy]

I have an HDD from a retired laptop I would like to use for external storage. I put the drive in an external enclosure and I used a pc running win7 to delete both partitions in disk management. Now the drive does not show up in "My Computer" or "Disk Management". I would like to format it. Any help would be extremely appreciated.

[Merc1138]

I have an HDD from a laptop that is no longer around. I put the drive in an external enclosure and I used a pc running win7 to delete both partitions in disk manager. Now the drive does not show up in "My Computer". I would like to format it. Any help would be extremely appreciated.

Go back to disk manager and create a new partition on it, that's the step you forgot.

[Some Guy]

Go back to disk manager and create a new partition on it, that's the step you forgot.

Drive does not show up in disk management.

[steven_m64]

You can download-burn-boot a linux livecd such as ubuntu or knoppix then see if it can see the hard drive in the disk utility gparted then re-partition and reformat it as needed.

[Someday]

F-disk from a dos prompt (if that still works in Windows 7)? (or maybe attach the HDD internally, format it, then put it back in the eternal case).

[gunn]

If you can't see the drive itself, can you see the enclosure in your device manager?

Q: Does the USB Mass Storage device show up in your device (not disk) manager?

if not, I suspect a hardware problem (configuration).
1) Is your USB drive enclosure have its own power supply or is it USB powered. USB has a limitation in that it can only supply 500mW when most drive (esp desktop drives) need more. The way some of those enclosures get around it is by having TWO male USB plugs at the end of the included cable. You need to plug both in to give the enclosure (and its HDD) enough juice.

2) Was the HDD Parallel ATA or SATA. If it was the old style ribbon cable, check the jumper on the HDD so that its in single drive (vs Master or Slave) mode.

-g

Wait. I re-read your post and it said that you could see the drive BEFORE you formatted it. If so, ignore both items above.
If you still see the enclosure and HDD in the device manager (not disk), you should still be able to see the drive under disk manager even if no drive letter is allocated and no partitions were made. That's odd.

[steven_m64]

If you purchased the external enclosure from frys for example and its a no-name brand / low quality such as bytecc or sabrent then its also possible that the enclosure has already died and needs to be replaced. :P

[Some Guy]

Problem solved! After reading Gunn's post I went back in to Disk Manager and found a volume with no drive letter. While trying to figure out what that volume was I realized my window wasn't opened all the way. I opened the window up and got it fixed. Thanks everyone for helping a now embarrassed noob.