external usb drive help please

[Wing Commander Fowler]

Hi chaps - have been using these external usb drives for some time now and decided to upgrade to a larger capacity unit. Have bought 2 western digital 2.5" drives each of 100 gig capacity and neither of them function in the vaio caddy I have. They spin up and seem to be read for half a second, they are recognised by windows which loads the driver but they never appear in explorer. If I check the properties of them it comes up with "populate" I do this and it shows information relevant to the disc but the window beneath doesn't show any drive letter as of course I guess they haven't been formatted. Any ideas at all? Seems strange that both are the same. Tried in my laptop and on my mates pc.

Appreciate your thoughts.

Fowler.

[Wing Commander Fowler]

........ and a rather dim light brightens! Some times I am such a divvy. Managed it under control panel/ administritive tools. Its allowed me to format it now. I post this in case anyone else is shrouded in a similar dimness. :bored: