I have a 10 month old e-machines D2880 http://emachines.com/support/product_support.html?cat=desktop&subcat=D-Series&model=D2880 running Windows XP. The hard drive has 3 partitions. In order to do backups, I purchased a Plumax PM-525U2-PRB hard drive enclosure and Western Digital 160JB hard drive. Inside the enclosure, there were three connections. The ribbon cable, a heavy duty power cable to attach to the hard drive and a light duty wire that I did NOT connect at all.

When the enclosure is turned off and I plug in the USB cable, nothing happens. When I turn the enclosure on, the power light comes on and I get the tones from the computer indicating a USB device has been connected. When I disconnect the USB drive, I get tones from the computer indicating USB device has been disconnected.

My Computer is showing Drives C, D and E (my three partitions) under hard drives, F as a DVD CD-RW and G, H, I and J as removable storage, regardless of whether hard drive enclosure is attached. The external hard drive does not seem to be recognized.

If I had installed this hard drive inside the computer, I suspect my job at this point would be to set the jumpers and formatting the hard drive. But, because this is external, not sure where to go from here to get the computer to recognize this hard drive.

Do I just need to have 2 connections from the hard drive to the enclosure?

Do I have to change the jumpers?

Format the hard drive? (If so, do I need to know anything before I do so?)

Are there other questions I need to be asking?

As always, your help would be appreciated.

William Closure

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