External hard drive not recognized by Windows Vista

Jill · Jan 19, 2009

My laptop was stolen recently and the new one has Vista Home Premium, while
my old one had XP. Most of my external devices worked fine with Vista, but my
external hard drive which has all my photos and complete iTunes library isnÂ´t
recognized by my new computer. For example, when I try to play a song from my
iTunes library I get the message that it won't play because it can't find the
original archive. I use these songs to practice and many are songs of our
group that I recorded as pistas and now I can't access them, this is NOT
FUNNY!!! Help!

ED · Jan 19, 2009

It is very hard to say what exactly is going on here, so I will ask a few
questions and try to help out in any way that I can.

What company manufactured your external drive? When you plug it in do you
recieve any notification, in the lower-right corner of the screen, that would
indicate Windows Vista does recognize that a new USB devices has been plugged
in?

There are a number of possibilities here, so I am simply trying to narrow
them down.

Jill · Jan 20, 2009

Hi, hopefully you can help me. My external is a WD My Book 250 gB and I
don't get any notification of a new USB device and it's not listed as
hardware in Â¨my computerÂ¨, but my external DVD drive and floppy drive DO show
up. I don't think there's any connection, but my old laptop (a Dell) and my
external hard drive I brought to Mexico from the States and my new laptop (a
Toshiba) I bought here in Mexico. A friend of mine did something about a
month ago and it was recognized, but now it's back the way it started, not
recognized. I did try it in all the USB ports...

> It is very hard to say what exactly is going on here, so I will ask a few

> questions and try to help out in any way that I can.
> What company manufactured your external drive? When you plug it in do you

jaf · Jan 20, 2009

Hi Jill,
Do you access a network with "network drives"?
You may have a conflicting drive letter mapping.
Check the drive letters in administrative tools>computer management, click on storage.

John

> Hi, hopefully you can help me. My external is a WD My Book 250 gB and I

> don't get any notification of a new USB device and it's not listed as

> hardware in Â¨my computerÂ¨, but my external DVD drive and floppy drive DO show

> up. I don't think there's any connection, but my old laptop (a Dell) and my

> external hard drive I brought to Mexico from the States and my new laptop (a

> Toshiba) I bought here in Mexico. A friend of mine did something about a

ED · Jan 21, 2009

If I understand correctly your Western Digital (WD) drive is not being
recognized when you plug in the USB cable, but other USB devices are. Given
this information I can safely say that USB ports are not the issue. I have
checked the WD website for incompatibility issues and found only this notice:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...SZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXZpc3Rh&p_li=&p_topview=1

So there are a few things it could be. The first would be that you simply
need to download this update. Another possibility is a power issue. Is the AC
Adapter plugged in when you try to use it? If so, do any lights come on?
Another possibility could be the drive itself. Are you hearing any clicking,
or other odd noises, coming from the drive?

Another user mentioned the network issue. Have you tried his/her suggestion?
That would be another thing to check.

If the update is not needed, it's not a power issue, the network issue, and
the drive is still in good condition, then I am not sure what could be going