• What happens when I connect my external drive for the first time?

Cabling

• How to determine which cable to use to plug in your drive.
• How to distinguish cables for external drives.
• How to find purchase locations for USB and Firewire cables.

Using your external drive as shared storage

• How to swap your storage device between a PC and a Mac.
• How to use your external storage device with multiple PCs.
• Can I use an external hard drive as a network share?

External Drive Software

Many external hard drives come with bundled backup software. Modern drives, such as Seagate FreeAgent and Maxtor OneTouch 4 drives, come with the software pre-loaded on the drive itself. There is no need to use any CD or download any extra software. If you decide not to use the prebundled software, find out how to use an external or internal hard drive without any bundled software.

• Installation Assistance page
• How to install an internal laptop drive
• How to install and troubleshoot ATA hard drives
• Interactive ATA installation guide
• Interactive Serial ATA installation guide
• Seagate SATA installation tutorial
• How to install and troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives
• SATA-II installation interactive flash guide
• How to install, format, and partition an internal PATA or SATA drive in Windows Vista
• How to install and troubleshoot Seagate SCSI hard drives

• Step-by-Step Troubleshooters

A problem with the software, corrupted data, an occasional clicking noise, or blinking lights, etc. usually do not mean drive failure.

• Windows Vista requests drivers for an external drive.
• Where can I get drivers for my Seagate external hard drive?
• My external drive is not recognized by my computer.
• I am having problems with the backup software that came with a Seagate or Maxtor hard drive.
• I am receiving "Access Denied" Error or File/Folder Permission Issues on an External Drive.
• My USB device is detected with a ! or ? in Device Manager or The Device Manager displays a yellow ! icon next to my external drive.
• How to interpret blinking status lights on Maxtor and Seagate external drives.
• How to interpret blinking status lights on Maxtor-brand network drives.
• My internal drive is not recognized by my computer.

Step 1: First troubleshoot your drive to make sure that it is non-functional, and that any problems you are experiencing are not coming from the computer or a conflicting software program.

Step 2: If it is indeed non-functional, go to our warranty page.

Step 3: Click on "Return a Drive as Guest User" and follow the steps to verify its warranty status and create the warranty order.