Hardware

Ask something
Question Locked

External IDE HDD (through USB connection) Doesn't Show in My Computer

0 helpful
9 replies

by nooozeguy

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I have a Seagate 400 GB HD attached to a Vista Home Premium laptop through a USB external hard drive enclosure. The drive shows up as a USB device in the device manager, but I cannot get the device to appear in My Computer.
I downloaded Seagate's SeaTools application and the drive passes all tests.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Josh

9 replies

by ebouza

The first step I would take is to go to My Computer right click and select manage. A new window will open click on disk management on the right side of the window you will see all the hard drives and cd roms/dvd roms connected to your pc. Most likely the USB drive is trying to use a drive letter that is taken. Right click on the cdrom/dvdrom and select change drive letter. A dialog box will open with a drop down menu choose another letter, when you click on ok Windows will give you a warning saying that changing the letter might affect programs that use that device click ok. Now your cd/dvd rom's letter has been changed. Leave that window open and go back to My Computer and double click on it and you should see your usb drive and all your other drives as well. Hope this helps.

Erick

by nooozeguy

I changed the drive letters on all of the drives except for the primary partition on my hard drive, since that is what Windows runs from.
So, my drive letters are now:
C: Primary hard drive partition
T: Second hard drive partition (no data is being used on this)
W: CD Rom
In Computer Management, the USB drive is listed as:
Disk 1 Unknown Unreadable.

Do you have any other suggestions?
Thanks,
Josh

p.s. I downloaded Seagate's utility and tested the drive connected via USB and it passed all tests.

by ebouza

Is your external drive already formatted? Have you tried to connect it to another computer to see if it is readable? What does it show on the right side of disk management?

by oh smeg

Look at the USB Lead and if you have 2 USB Plugs on the Computer end plug them both in. One is to allow extra Power to the USB Device as most new NB's have a low USB Current rating.

It also wouldn't hurt to make sure that the USB Drive is actually formatted as well.

Col

by nooozeguy

The drive uses a standard USB plug to connect to the computer and a separate power cord, which I have plugged into the wall outlet.
I assume you are asking whether the IDE drive in the USB case is formatted--it is and has lots of data on it. If you are asking whether the USB *case* is formatted, I don't think that is possible.
Thanks,
Josh

by oh smeg

If that is the case it's a Vista Problem related to the supposed added security of Vista. If that is the case you need to get a XP Computer and network the 2 together and transfer the data from the USB Drive connected to the XP computer to the Vista Computer, then move the USB Drive to the Vista Computer and format it there. Then you can copy your data back and it should work.

Col

by nooozeguy

Yes!
This is the case...
That's a shame that Vista won't cooperate with an XP drive...
I will give that a shot.
BTW, I have a Linux machine as well (but not an XP machine). Can I use the Linux machine to get the data from the XP-formatted drive?
Thanks,
Josh

This discussion is closed to new replies.