I require instruction on the use of my portable hard drive.

From Verbatim "Installing your portable hard drive is extremely simple - just use the included mini-USB cable to connect your hard drive to any free USB port on your computer. On Windows computers, a new icon will appear in My Computer representing your hard drive. On Mac OS systems, your hard drive will appear on the desktop as a new disk."

If you are using a mac go into applications then utilities and run i believe its called disk utility and you can use that utility to format the hdd

Just make sure you have any and all data that you want saved moved elsewhere before proceeding.

the power requirements of the hard drive are too much to run it from the laptop, remove any other usb devices and you will find that it works

you boot from it but putting inside means taking it apart finding the connections that will adapt it to your pc or whatever but it is possible

booting from it would require simply installing an os onto the drive instead of your c: drive, just keep in mind you will have to change your bios to boot from the appropriate drive

If your system detects the connected device that is a good start. Was the drive formatted for another operating system? Certainly try the drive on another system and/or another drive on your system.

Assuming you've already tried using it on another PC or Mac (as appropriate) with any needed software installed, and that didn't work, your next DIY step is to remove it from the container.

If you can remove it (most drive makers do not publish the instructions to disassemble their equipment), you can hook the drive up inside most PC (not laptop) cases directly (if they have the required IDE or SATA connection), or take it to your local PC store for a quick test.

As a last resort, you can sent it to a "disk or drive recovery" company to get some or all of your data back if it hasn't been lost to a surface defect on the disk. This is usually a fairly expensive option.

You can start here to download your manuals.

And here for the drivers.

This device wont work with windows 98 its requires windows 2000 or higher, this is a link for the complete system requirements of this device http://www.buy.com/prod/iomega-250gb-ego-usb-2-0-portable-hard-drive-camo-iomega-ego-portable/q/loc/101/207899438.html

Hope that helps..............

The OS is hidden in memory, you can clear all files off the machine and it will still work.

The only requirements are the 4 folders:
Firmware
Movies
Music
Pictures

That's it!

New firmware can be found at www.lacie.com