# [SOLVED] Pluscom 3.5 IDE Aluminum Enclosure



## jimchunter (Nov 18, 2010)

I have a spare Deskstar 3.5 IDE hard drive and have purchased a Pluscom 3.5 IDE to USB 2.0 Aluminum Enclosure. When I plug this into my HP laptop running Windows 7 a message comes up stating
You need to format the disk in drive G: before you can use it. Do you want to format it? Format disk or cancel button. I click Format. A box appears showing Capacity of disk 31.4GB. File system Fat32 (Default) Allocation unit size 16 kilobytes. Volume Label Then Quick Format button is automatically ticked.  I then click start button. Message appears Warning: Formatting will erase ALL data on this disk. To format the disk click OK to Quit click cancel. I click OK. A message appears straight away stating, Windows was unable to complete the format. Help please am I unable to use the enclosure because I am using Windows 7 or is there something I am missing along the way. Jim


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## JimE (Apr 16, 2009)

*Re: Pluscom 3.5 IDE Aluminum Enclosure*

Use Disk Management. Check the status of the drive. You can also try deleting all of the partitions on the drive, create a new partition using all of the available space, and then format (NTFS).


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

*Re: Pluscom 3.5 IDE Aluminium Enclosure*

Hi Jim

I have the same enclosure with a 500Gb IDE drive. I had no troubles formatting it in the way that Dogg suggests. I formatted it NTFS.


EDIT:
The only thing I suggest that you do is to take the Pluscome enclosure apart and glue some insulating material (thin plastic or rubber sheet) on to the inside of the aluminium where the printed circuit board 'Track Side' is. It is easy to distort the bracket holding the printed circuit board and causing it to short out on the aluminium. Since I modified mine, I have had no problem.

I like the enclosure because it has an internal fan that helps to keep the drive cooler.


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## jimchunter (Nov 18, 2010)

*Re: Pluscom 3.5 IDE Aluminum Enclosure*

Dogg & DonaldG Took your advice and all is resolved in no time at all, now have that extra bit of portable storage 
BIG THANKS
Jim


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