Ok, you've put together your hardware. The previous post may have been about 800 words, but in real-time the whole hardware thing only takes a few minutes (provided your enclosure screws don't strip!). Next comes the software part. In the next few posts, we'll configure our hard disk so it's formatted and recognized by Windows, then we'll setup backup software, and then we'll add encryption software so you can keep the important stuff safe in case your new portable treasure gets lost. Best part? All these software smarts are free. You've paid as much as you're going to pay, so don't worry about the budget anymore.

 

First things first, tho. Windows needs to recognize the drive. (Oh and for those of you getting miffed that I'm ignoring OS X, not only is this a Microsoft-sponsored blog, I also don't have a Mac handy to do this on. Sorry.) Back to Windows.

 

Plug the drive into your PC. For PCs with Firewire ports, you can use those, but frankly, USB 2.0 is more than fast enough to manage the 5400rpm Samsung disk we got on sale. It also should supply enough power so you don't need to plug your drive into the wall separately. If the USB port you choose doesn't have enough power, the CompUSA enclosure has a second USB plug that will slip into another USB port on your system and provide enough juice.

 

Whether it's the MadDog or the CompUSA enclosure, the enclosure will configure itself via USB 2. You'll see some text ballons pop up on the bottom right hand corner of your screen. They'll see things like "New USB hardware detected." "Disk drive." And finally, "Your USB hardware is installed." Only it's not--at least not fully. The enclosure is configured, but the drive inside it still needs some work.

 

Once the balloons stop, click on Start => Control Panel => Administrative Tools => Computer Management. You'll see a work window on the right and a tree-style list of options on the left. Click on Disk Management in the tree (click on the first image below for a full-size screen shot). The right-hand work window will split into two panes, with the bottom part listing your external hard disk as an unformatted drive. Just right click on this drive letter and you'll see an option for New Partition. Click on that to start the New Partition wizard. This is real easy, just follow along with the following caveats.

 

First, the wizard will ask how big this new partition is going to be. It'll default to the maximum size of the disk, which is most likely where you should just leave it. (Click on the second thumb image below to get a full-sized screen shot.) This just means that the entire drive will be visible as a single drive folder on any PC you plug the drive into. That's less work for most of us than configuring multiple partitions on the drive.

 

Now you'll be asked to assign a drive letter to the drive. You'll be presented with three options (click on the third thumbnail below for a full-size screenshot): Drive letter, an NTFS volume name, or not assigning anything. Stick with the first one. We're going to format the drive as NTFS (so that you can save movie files of more than 3.5GB, which you can't do under FAT32). So you might be tempted to simply call the drive an NTFS volume name like "PortaDisk". That'll work for the most part, but a whole lot of Windows software--even today--is drive letter-dependent. If it sees a volume name insteald of a drive letter, much of the software out there today can't function properly. By taking the default drive letter you bypass that difficulty, and if you plug it into a PC where that drive letter is already taken, Windows will just assign the next available letter. No problem.

 

Almost done. Now the wizard will show you formatting options. Again, you've got a couple of options (click on the fourth thumbnail below for the full-size screen shot): Don't format or Do Format. You want to format, so highlight that second one. Next, pick how you want to format it (usually between FAT32 and NTFS). These are two Windows-compatible file systems. FAT32 is fine, but NTFS is typically a bit quicker and it also supports larger volumes as well as larger file sizes. So if you want to run movies off this drive so you can be entertained on airplanes and such, you want NTFS because that system can handle files bigger than 4GB (your typical two-hour MPEG2 movie). Just select NTFS in the drop menu. After that, you've only got one other decision--whether to do a low-level format or a quick format. If the drive is brand new, select quick format. If you're recycling a drive off an old notebook or something, then you'll want to do a low-level format to make sure all the crud is off it. The quick format takes only a minute or two. The low-level format will take some time, so if you're going that route get ready to take a break.

 

The wizard will now display a summary page, just listing all the options you've selected. Click okay and the drive will get its new letter and formatting. After that, you've got a working external hard drive.

 

You could stop here and the thing will work fine. But if you follow through the next couple of posts, I'll show you how to enable the one-button backup that comes with the CompUSA enclosure, or build a software-only one-button backup alternative. After that, we'll cover putting an encrypted folder on the drive so you can put any confidential files in there and make sure that no one except you can decrypt them. Stay tuned.