q's about setting up external hdd

[bhome83]

i have a seagate 400gb hdd, and a apricorn ez bus dt external enclosure. am i supposed to set hdd to master? i believe i already have a master hdd in my computer though. then again, i have no idea. thanks!

[glc]

Master or cable select, doesn't matter.

[bhome83]

thanks glc, but why doesn't it matter? also, is this all i really need to do to get the drive working after i format it? thanks!

[glc]

It doesnt matter because that's only a single connector in the housing. You can format it in the housing.

[bhome83]

so why when i try to format this 400gb hdd with file system NTFS it doesn't go through the long formatting process? after i go through all the options of picking my allocation size, file system i thought it was supposed to begin formatting, but doesnt. looks like the drive is fine though. it is showing up as the F: drive on my computer with 370gb of free space. so where is the other 30gb? it says only 70mb has been used :( thanks!

[glc]

A 400gb drive will show as about 370, that's normal.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=118330

You probably did a quick format, that only takes a few seconds.

[bhome83]

yeah i did a quick format. the manuel for the hdd, said to choose this. so what is the dif. between a quick format and regular format? thanks glc!

[glc]

Quick format simply initializes the drive, full format checks for bad sectors.

[bhome83]

so do you think i should do a full format to check for those bad sectors? also, why are hdd drives advertised at 400gb but 30gb are taken away to begin with? thanks!

[glc]

If the drive is performing well, no need.

Read my link.