When you connect your hard drive to your Windows computer and turn it on, you do not need to install any software or drivers to make the drive available for use.

1. The drive will appear as a drive letter in (My) Computer (ie: Drive E:, F:, or some other letter) within approximately 30 seconds of connecting and turning on the drive.



2. Often the AutoPlay window will appear within 30 seconds.



3. You can click on "Open Folder to View Files Using Windows Explorer" to open the drive letter, or on the drive letter in (My) Computer. When that window opens, the drive is functioning normally.



4. Then you can simply drag-and-drop data, or copy-and-paste data, into the drive to use it manually.



5. Additionally, you can launch/install the Seagate/Maxtor software to take advantage of the software's features. For help doing that, see our external hard drive software How To page.

There are two styles of external hard drives.

1. 3.5-inch, which connect to the computer using USB, FireWire or eSATA, and which plug into the wall for power.



2. 2.5-inch, which connect to the computer via one or two USB plugs, drawing all their power from the USB connection only.

• Cabling - an overview
• What kind of cable does my external drive use?

Your hard drive is like a warehouse that waits for you to fill it with data, by any of these methods:

• Drag and drop
• Copy and paste
• A backup software program
• Mirror-image (or clone) of another hard drive, using a Seagate software called DiscWizard (see step 3 of How can I copy / transfer all the data from my old boot drive to my new Seagate drive?).

You can also organize the data in your drive by creating folders.

How to create folders in Windows:

1. Double-click on (My) Computer.



2. Find the external drive's drive letter (as discussed above, it is often set to E: automatically).



3. Double-click on the drive letter. The window will change to display the contents inside the drive.



4. Right-click inside the window. A menu will open.



5. Choose "New" and then "Folder".



6. Click on the folder's name to rename the folder.



7. Repeat as many times as you need.



8. You can copy and paste, drag and drop, use the backup software, and/or copy a mirror image into one of those folders using DiscWizard.

How to create folders in Mac OS:

1. Double-click on the drive that is mounted on the Desktop.



2. Press and hold down the Control key on your keyboard.



3. Click on the Desktop and a menu will appear. Choose New Folder.



4. Rename the folder and you can copy and paste, drag and drop, use the backup software, and/or copy a mirror image into one of those folders using Time Machine.

Please note that partitioning your drive is data destructive, so please make sure that you have your important data backed up before performing this action on your drive.

• How to partition a drive in Windows Vista.
• How to partition a drive in Windows XP/2000.
• How to partition a drive in MacOS X.