Hitachi Travelstar Hard Disk Problem

[codeash]

I have bought a Hitachi Travelstar 40GB hard disk for my laptop as external memory. The LED of the external hard drive becomes green as soon as I connect it to the USB but windows doesn't detect it, some times it does detect it and the LED becomes red but still windows doesn't show me the files. The beep alert when a hardware is connected comes when the LED becomes red but windows does not show the hard drive.

What might be the problem for this...I'm ready to lose all the data on the hard drive if formatting is the solution but how should I go about the formatting thing when Windows doesn't even detect the hard drive.

One more thing I would like to ask is can I get the Hard Drive replaced in any computer peripheral shop or only from the place from where I bought it if the hard disk is under warranty?

[d]

check it out on another computer, dude... did you install any software that came with the drive? when its plugged in, can you hear the heads moving.. or some drive activity? or the drive spinning up? can you see the drive in device manager?

[codeash]

I can't see any drive in device manager...I have tried it with 15+ laptops but its not working. There is no sound also...Only thing that happens is the green LED comes as soon as I plug in the drive but than after some time it becomes constant red...the OS doesn't recognise the drive at all...