External drive wont show up - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

ShaniFaye · 10-14-2007, 01:59 PM

ok....Im sure I prob wont explain this right or give all the information you need but here goes

Dave acquired a hitachi hard drive that he is trying to get to work and an external drive on his gateway laptop.

We bought an enclosure (plug and play and powered by the usb cable) neither his computer (nor mine which is an acer aspire 9300) will recognize it.

I've searched all the tech forums and it seems when this happens what needs to be done is to go into disk management and either reassign the drive letter or reformat from there...our problem is that it does not show up there, nor does it show in device manager.

the enclosure lights up and you can hear the drive running and even though both laptops tell you that its found new hardware.....it doesnt show up anywhere. We have installed the drivers from the cd that came with the enclosure and thats making no difference either

We have tried the drive with and without a jumper, its making no difference at all.

when its plugged in, it doesnt seem to affect his at all, but when its plugged in mine it completely freezes it up and I cant do a thing.

Any advice?

Lasereth · 10-14-2007, 02:48 PM

Ouch, I was gonna recommend Disk Management to reassign the drive letter but it looks like you've already tried it.

What I WOULD recommend is trying it on each PC with no other USB devices plugged in (if possible). Many USB devices like printers and hard drives will function very oddly if they don't have enough USB power. They will show up in Windows briefly and then disappear, etc. Try different USB slots on both PCs and if that doesn't work, unplug every USB device and try it alone.

ShaniFaye · 10-14-2007, 02:55 PM

we did all that....we dont keep anything plugged into our usb's on our laptops. Since I posted we even tried on our desktop....same thing as the laptops. The enclosure came with a split USB because of possible power issues, we've also tried it with one and both plugged in on all the pc's.

I know one thing I forgot to add (sorry) this is not a new hard drive it is one from a laptop of a friend so its got and OS on it....we were trying to get it to show up so we could format it and wipe it clean

DarkPho · 10-14-2007, 03:27 PM

For the second time today, I call Linux as the solution.
Running Linux via a LiveCD will let you plug in the HDD and see if the result is just Windows playing up or if it's the drive or enclosure.

If you're considering this, let me know and I'll guide you through it. The other guy I helped today I set up with Slax (http://www.slax.org/), nice and small and does the job.

10-14-2007, 01:59 PM	#1 (permalink)
ShaniFaye Submit to me, you know you want to Location: Lilburn, Ga	External drive wont show up ok....Im sure I prob wont explain this right or give all the information you need but here goes Dave acquired a hitachi hard drive that he is trying to get to work and an external drive on his gateway laptop. We bought an enclosure (plug and play and powered by the usb cable) neither his computer (nor mine which is an acer aspire 9300) will recognize it. I've searched all the tech forums and it seems when this happens what needs to be done is to go into disk management and either reassign the drive letter or reformat from there...our problem is that it does not show up there, nor does it show in device manager. the enclosure lights up and you can hear the drive running and even though both laptops tell you that its found new hardware.....it doesnt show up anywhere. We have installed the drivers from the cd that came with the enclosure and thats making no difference either We have tried the drive with and without a jumper, its making no difference at all. when its plugged in, it doesnt seem to affect his at all, but when its plugged in mine it completely freezes it up and I cant do a thing. Any advice? __________________ *I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!*

10-14-2007, 02:55 PM	#3 (permalink)
ShaniFaye Submit to me, you know you want to Location: Lilburn, Ga	we did all that....we dont keep anything plugged into our usb's on our laptops. Since I posted we even tried on our desktop....same thing as the laptops. The enclosure came with a split USB because of possible power issues, we've also tried it with one and both plugged in on all the pc's. I know one thing I forgot to add (sorry) this is not a new hard drive it is one from a laptop of a friend so its got and OS on it....we were trying to get it to show up so we could format it and wipe it clean __________________ *I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!*

10-14-2007, 02:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
Lasereth Knight of the Old Republic Location: Winston-Salem, NC	Ouch, I was gonna recommend Disk Management to reassign the drive letter but it looks like you've already tried it. What I WOULD recommend is trying it on each PC with no other USB devices plugged in (if possible). Many USB devices like printers and hard drives will function very oddly if they don't have enough USB power. They will show up in Windows briefly and then disappear, etc. Try different USB slots on both PCs and if that doesn't work, unplug every USB device and try it alone.

10-14-2007, 03:27 PM	#4 (permalink)
DarkPho Tilted	For the second time today, I call Linux as the solution. Running Linux via a LiveCD will let you plug in the HDD and see if the result is just Windows playing up or if it's the drive or enclosure. If you're considering this, let me know and I'll guide you through it. The other guy I helped today I set up with Slax (http://www.slax.org/), nice and small and does the job.