External drive not showing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Smiley
  • Start date Start date
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Smiley

Got an IDE drive on external casing. Used it between home and work. lately
encountered some problem. After I have used it at work, when plugged into
machine at work, the drive came up to said can't find F: which is a drive
that I have at work.

After plugged into the home machine and received the above 'error' message,
open up window explorer but can't find the drive. The drive can't be found
in disk management either. please help. How can I see the drive and files at
home.
 
Smiley said:
Got an IDE drive on external casing. Used it between home and work. lately
encountered some problem. After I have used it at work, when plugged into
machine at work, the drive came up to said can't find F: which is a drive
that I have at work.

After plugged into the home machine and received the above 'error' message,
open up window explorer but can't find the drive. The drive can't be found
in disk management either. please help. How can I see the drive and files at
home.
Click to expand...

Two things to check. First, is the hard drive in the external case
still working? Install into another USB external drive case and test.
If Windows sees the hard drive with its new connection, then the HD
is OK. Or, on the flip side, check the external case electronics by
putting another, known working drive in it. If Windows sees this HD,
then the original HD in the case is damaged.
 
If the external drive is powered through the USB cable it might not be
getting quite enough power without using an axilliary USB power connector.

Is the drive listed when you open the "Safely Remove Hardware" tool? If not
and you had the drive plugged in to a USB port and running when you powered
up the computer Windows might not have enumerated the port properly and
installed an ' Unknown device' instead of the proper driver. It will remain
that way until you uninstall the Unknown device on that USB port.
Two things to try while Windows is running: Open device manager and look
under the Universal Serial Bus Controllers, uninstall the Unknown device
(might be more than one). Turn off the external harddrive and after a few
seconds turn it back on. Windows should reinstall the drive properly.
Second thing to try instead, leave Windows running, turn off the external
harddrive and plug the USB cable into a different USB port. Turn the drive
on again and Windows should detect it normally on the new port. Any unknown
USB devices will remain on the system so you should clean them out when
convenient.
 
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