Vista and XP don't recognise my external Drive

H

hansov

Registered User
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I know that I am doing something wrong, or forgetting something, but just don’t know what it is. I have a 2.5 inch laptop drive inserted into an external USB caddy. I am using Vsta on one of the PCs, XP on the other. I plug the caddy into the USB socket and the PCs recognise the new hardware, installs the drivers etc. However when I go into Windows Explorer the machine(s) do not see the drive. I have gone into Control Panel, System, Device Manager and I see the drive, its working properly etc. (on both machies) Anybody have a clue as to what am I doing incorrectly?
 
That I do not know - its a brand new drive so it'sprobably not. Pardon my ignoarnce - where to I find disk manager? In Control Panel?
 
exact same thing happened to me. Turned out the external disk was broken. Expert told me this is a very common occurance even with new ones. I had only used mine twice.
 
hansov said:
That I do not know - its a brand new drive so it'sprobably not. Pardon my ignoarnce - where to I find disk manager? In Control Panel?
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Right click on My Computer on your desktop or in the Start menu then choose Manage > Storage > Disk Management. If you don't know what you're doing you should get advice in person from somebody with technical experience with administering PCs.
 
The drive might not be configure, partitioned, formatted etc.

The USB ports might not supply enough power and you'll need a Y cable.

The drive is faulty.

There might be Master/Slave/Cable Select settings you need to set on the drive itself.

Is there any data on this drive. Or is it new?
 
ClubMan said:
If you don't know what you're doing you should get advice in person from somebody with technical experience with administering PCs.
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Clubman: I am only trying to learn. I am not a novice user of a PC and graduated from the novice status by asking questions hence this one.....

aircobra19: the drive is new and unused; so it is not partitioned or formatted. I just slotted it into the 2.5 inch caddy. As I noted, the PC was aware that new hardware was atached and it found the drivers. I will this evening go to Disk Manage as Clubman suggested. I presume that there it would allow one to format/partition a new drive.
 
aircobra19 said:
There might be Master/Slave/Cable Select settings you need to set on the drive itself.
Click to expand...

If the drive is working then the above is the most likely.
There should be some pins in the back of the drive itself where you connected it into the caddy. Check them and switch between master/slave

Happened me before

Mik
 
Will do - thanks folks! I never thought of looking for pins on a 2.5 inch. Have seen and moved pins on a 3.5 inch before.
 
Thanks folks - a format did it! You see Clubman - there's something else new that I have learned but wouldn't have if you didn't point me in the right direction. Thanks
 
I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest to people that if they don't know what they're doing then they should get advice from somebody who does. I've seen too many cases of people making a mess of things because they didn't know what they were doing but proceeded anyway to say otherwise.
 
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