Can't see external hard drive in Windows Explorer

  • Thread starter Thread starter tgeorge
  • Start date Start date
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tgeorge

I am connecting an external hard drive (Acomdata 250G drive - pretty
standard) via USB to my HP laptop running Vista. I am able to see the device
listed under Disk Drives in the Device Manager. Drilling into Properties, I
see that the device is running properly and, having re-loaded the device
drivers, I have the most recent drivers.

The issue: I am unable to see the device listed in Window Explorer, and thus
I can't drill into the folders to get at the content.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Is it assigned a drive letter in Drive Management?

Right click Computer, choose Manage, expand Storage, and choose Disk
Management.
 
Many thanks, Colin. I had not found the Disk Management function previously.

Unfortunately, the problem persists. The disk appears in Disk Management,
its status is Online. However, when I right click the volume, the option to
Change Drive Letter and Paths is grayed out. The only options are Delete
Volume and Help (which doesn't have an answer for this issue).

Here's a piece of information that could be the root of the issue: the data
on the disk was written from a Mac. But it was written to be readable by
both Macs and PCs.

Any thoughts? Again, many thanks.
 
The drive is probably formatted FAT32 since Macs cannot modify NTFS files.
Vista should still be able to handle the files since Vista has no problem
with FAT32. However I suspect that the drive was formatted with a Mac and
Vista may not be able to mount it. Do you have another computer which you
can hook it up to and see if you can pull any files you need off of it?
What you need to do is get the files off, hook it back up to the Vista
machine, use Drive Management to delete the partition, recreate the
partition, and assign a drive letter. You shouldn't have any issue with it
after that.
 
Again, many thanks for the help. It may take a couple days to get access to
a computer to follow the steps you provided, but I'll try it, and get back to
you.

I appreciate your expertise.
 
You're welcome.

tgeorge said:
Again, many thanks for the help. It may take a couple days to get access
to
a computer to follow the steps you provided, but I'll try it, and get back
to
you.

I appreciate your expertise.
Click to expand...
 
Hi I have a laptop tx2120us with Windows Vista Ultimate, and I want to
conect an HP external personal media drive to my notebook via USB, but the
computer can't recognize it, and when I enter to my computer this function is
not responding...What can I do??
I appreciate your help with this, hope the answer soon.
 
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