External hard drive

I purchased a Western Digital IDE hard drive to use in my external USB case. My computer recognizes that there is a mass storage devise through the USB port but doesn’t show any drive. I did not receive any software with this hard drive. Is there something I have to do to the new drive or the computer to recognize this drive or did I receive a defective drive? Running windows XP:confused

 

Did you format the new drive if not go to control panel/Administration Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management then look for your drive put arrow on there right click and format. If it still does not show in Windows post back.

 

Try a portioning program i use acronis. My computer originally wouldn't show my external but that program saw it, and i was able to format it and then see it.
so id say thats worth a shot. Alternatively you can boot up in DOS and use the command FDISK and follow the instructions to format the disk