Harddrive not being recognised

[bennyzachariah]

Hi all,

I just recently got an external hard drive bay for my hardrive. It's at Maxtor 120GB IDE 7200rpm. And the Bay is a USB 2.0. Problem being that when i plug it in it doesnt seem to come up on My Computer. Im running XP and although it recognises the hardrive in there in device manager, i cant seem to access it. Any ideas? I'm pretty sure that the drivers were installed, but i'm kinda stumped. Any help would be great.

[hudsonsmith]

Well, lets go with the obvious first - did you format the drive? Does it show up in Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc)? Beyond that we need to know:
-make and model of computer and/or motherboard
-sp1 installed?
-make and model of the drive bay

[mib]

Hi all,

I just recently got an external hard drive bay for my hardrive. It's at Maxtor 120GB IDE 7200rpm. And the Bay is a USB 2.0. Problem being that when i plug it in it doesnt seem to come up on My Computer. Im running XP and although it recognises the hardrive in there in device manager, i cant seem to access it. Any ideas? I'm pretty sure that the drivers were installed, but i'm kinda stumped. Any help would be great.

I had a problem with an external USB 2.0 hard drive last year, and it took me several months to find the solution, and you won't believe how simple it was.

My USB HD worked fine on new PC models, but for some reason, did not on my Compaq P4, 1.6G. After months of tinkering, and giving up, and tinkering once again, I discovered that I had to use two USB slots on my PC for the HD to work!

You see, my external caddy had two USB connectors, one shaped like the regular one (small trapezoid), and the other, like that of the power adaptor (you know, circular with a metal thingy in the middle). On new PC models with USB 2.0 slots, plugging one cable with the regular connector was enough.

However, with older models that had USB 1.x, you have to plug in the second USB connector that supplied power (I think) to the unit.

When I did not plug the second connector, all I had was a green light, but no red activity light, and I could not find the drive in My Computer. But when I did, the red activity light began blinking, and the PC automatically assigned a drive letter to the external HD.

Now, I'm not sure which external hard drive you have, so it is a good idea to provide hudonsmith's requirements. My suggestion will only be applicable if you have an old PC with pre-USB 2.0.

Furthermore, I have seen other external HD models with one USB port, and a special kind of USB cable that had two rectangular connectors on one end. If you have one of these, and your PC is old, try connecting the second connector as well.

Good luck.

[Ferrit]

Which USB ports are you truing to use?
The ones on the back or the ones on the front.
Quite often the ones oin the front are intermittent
Also as hudson said what motherboard?
Have you also updated the motherboard chipset drivers?

[hudsonsmith]

Don't think answers are forthcoming. Original post is 7 months old.