A blank drive would have to be formatted yes in order for windows to see it but when you get an error message like that, that means sonething is up with the drive. It looks like that's an off brand drive too so that's another thing to be leary about.Maybe it needs to be formatted?
I use the front USBs. Now I see that it's 3.0 USBs.USB 3 hardware will also work in USB 2 ports so no worries there. Are you using a port on the front of the case or the back? The front port if usb 3 will usually be blue compared to black for usb 2.