Problem with Hard disk

Hi wavey.gif i have been having a new issue recently see i dropped my laptop(well i slipped) and the hard drive got damaged(clicky sounds) i made a backup and installed linux on an external Hard disk(i thought i could revert it back to a storage device) but now that i have replace the hard drive i am now unable to format my hard disk it wont show up in my computer but it does in devices pls can you guys help me? Thx in advance

Hello Herro, Your best bet is to format it when installing Windows again. Although it is possible to format the HDD through Linux, it's just better for compatibility to let Windows do it during the installation. Cheers, Nahumi

Oh narumi btw the file system on the HDD is FAT32 could you also tell me how to do it through linux> thx

what linux distro are you using?

i assume

my hard disk it wont show up in my computer

"my computer" is an icon you click when at the desktop that then gives you info about your pc.
the reason it doesn't show up there yet is probably because you need to format and "mount" the drive first.:- http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/mounting.html

there are a couple of ways to format the hard drive in linux(you can give it a mount point at the same time if required) the easiest will probably be with whatever system tools for partitioning such as "gparted" that comes with your distro.
for ubuntu :- http://www.ehow.com/how_4929061_format-har…ive-ubuntu.html

the other way of course would be with the command line. :- http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-disk-format/

terry the distro would be ubuntu 11.04 and i manged to delete the partition on my HDD using the ubuntu install cd it says 500GB free space and yes the icon. THX for the help i will try all method given

Turn the computer off without the external hard drive being plugged in. plug the external hard drive in a usb port, power up, the systems post boot up will find the drive and inform windows what hardware is installed. When windows boots up, it will look at all the hardware and find the external hard drive, when windows finishes booting up you should be able to see the drive in my computer.