Usb Hard Drive Problem

A USB hard drive should be automatically recognized by WIN2K.
Make sure the drive is connected directly to the computer (not to a USB HUB).
Right-click the My Computer icon and select Manage.
Click the plus (+) sign next to Storage if it is not already expanded.
Click Disk Management.
Check for the presence of the USB Drive.
Check to see if a file system is present on the drive.
If not, right click on the disk, create a partition and format the disk.
If you're going to use the disk with other operating systems, make sure you select partition sizes and file systems that those systems can read.
Check the drive letter assignment to make sure it doesn't conflict with other devices you bay be using, you can change the drive letter by right-clicking the icon for the USB drive and click Change Drive Letter and Path.
Click the Edit button.
Assign a drive letter, select an unused drive letter from the drop-down menu.
Click OK.
A message appears that states 'Changing the drive letter of a volume may cause programs to no longer run.
Are you sure you want to change the drive letter?'
Click Yes.

If the drive does not appear in storage management, check your Device Manager for yellow question marks next to the USB section, if the USB bus is not detected properly, you may need usb or chipset drivers from your computer or motherboard manufacturer.
If there are no unknown devices, please post the make and model of your hard drive and computer or notherboard.

hi thanks for that im not sure you get the problem though ive got a 8ogb hard drive with ntfs formated on xp but want to use it in college in a usb hard drive case.When i turn it on i  only have read access on the files I want the device to be shown as a removable disk so i can write to the disk as well.is it possible without admin writes

It depends on who owns the files. If you've created users and modified rights on your file system you'll have to undo those by right clicking on the root of the external drive and adding everyone to have read/write (or reformat the drive with a file system like FAT32 that has no rights information (and could be used by WIN98, linux, macs, etc.)).

Make sure it's not the FILES that flagged read-only, such as happens when one copies a CD with some operating systems.