External Hard drive formatting issue resolution

After installation of drivers, I was expecting the hard drive to visible in My Computer window as another USB connected camera or flash drive is visible. This didn't happen. I unplugged the USB and tried again. This also didn't work.

Finally, I read the manual. And it said that the portable external hard drive needs to be formatted for Windows user. The instructions were very easy to go through. I followed the instructions for Windows Vista which I am using. It doesn't mention 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows Vista but the instructions dont't differ.

As per instructions:

• Right click My Computer icon, select Manage and click on Disk Management. Following window appears:

  

• The instruction says to Select Master boot record as the partition style and click OK.
• Next instruction says drive will now appear Unallocated and the bar will be black. But in my case the status of the disk was -Not Initialized.
• When I clicked on the black bar and selected New Simple Volume and followed the wizard by selecting default values, I got an error which read "The operation cannot be completed because the disk is not initialized". I was shocked for a second as I didn't expect this problem in my portable external hard drive which already took few days to be shipped to me and imagining the impatience of returning it back.

Finally, the solution was simple:
Before clicking on the black bar for the drive, first select the drive space and right click on top of the drive. It will give option to initialize the drive.

This will change the status of your portable external hard drive to Online.

Now follow the instructions described above and as per the manual and the hard drive will start formatting. It will take real long time for formatting to complete.

Enjoy your portable external hard drive.

Issue resolved.