external hard drive config

i recently bought an external enclosure to back up some data on my old 40 GB seagate hard drive. for 2 days was woking fine. now the led that shows disk activity stays on as soon as i connect the enclosure to the mains. please give me tips for what should i do. what file system should the drive have? any special programs?

reminder: i use the disk as a back up for some files. should be master,slave or something else?

btw it's an IDE. not SATA

 

as soon as you connect the mains the disk wil start spinning thats pretty normal. The drive should be set to master and if your using windows xp id have the drive formatted in NTFS, you need no special software

 

is it ok with cable select?

 

Nope needs to be master. No ands ifs or buts. MASTER!!!!

 

Well, I wouldn't go that far people....not all external enclosures work with a Master setting....mine only works with Slave! (IDE to USB 2.0)

 

Well maybe Im wrong Morph. I am human and prone to mistakes..LOL!

But all I have see use Master. :>