External hard drive not showing up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike D Harding
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M

Mike D Harding

About a year ago I added an external hard drive to my pc, connected by
a USB cable. The caddy has its own on-off switch. It used to be that
as soon as I switched it on, it would show up in my Windows XP (home
edn) file manager, etc.

Lately, I've noticed it's not showing up. I tried rebooting but it
still doesn't show.

What I can do to get it to show up?

Many thanks,

Mike
 
Mike D Harding said:
About a year ago I added an external hard drive to my pc,
connected by a USB cable. The caddy has its own on-off
switch. It used to be that as soon as I switched it on, it would
show up in my Windows XP (home edn) file manager, etc.
Click to expand...
Lately, I've noticed it's not showing up.
I tried rebooting but it still doesn't show.
Click to expand...
What I can do to get it to show up?
Click to expand...

Work out why its not showing up anymore and fix that.

Can you try it on a different system to see if its failed ?

If it doesnt show up on another system either, does
the drive inside appear to spin up when you turn it on ?

If it doesnt, and you know what you are doing, you could try
opening the external hard drive and checking that the drive is
getting power still. If it isnt, try replacing the power pack.
 
remove mention of 'composite devices' from the device manager under USB
heading
reboot plug in drive, turn on.....
 
Thanks for the reply,

Sorry; I think it's may be fire-wire cable rather than USB. The plug
is slightly narrower and slightly fatter than a normal USB.
Can you try it on a different system to see if its failed ?
Click to expand...

No - the only other system I have is a Windows 98 system with only
regular USB sockets
If it doesnt show up on another system either, does
the drive inside appear to spin up when you turn it on ?
Click to expand...

Yes, the drive starts whirring as it always has when switched on. The
LED comes on too.

Mike
 
remove mention of 'composite devices' from the device manager under USB
heading
reboot plug in drive, turn on.....
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion, but there is no mention of 'composite
devices' in my device manager under USB heading.

Muk
 
Thanks for the reply,
Click to expand...
Sorry; I think it's may be fire-wire cable rather than USB. The
plug is slightly narrower and slightly fatter than a normal USB.
Click to expand...
No - the only other system I have is a Windows
98 system with only regular USB sockets
Click to expand...
Yes, the drive starts whirring as it always has when switched on.
The LED comes on too.
Click to expand...

All you can really do now is to disassemble it and see if the hard
drive itself is fine by trying the drive itself as an internal drive. That
sounds like it might well be beyond your capabilitys to do safely tho.

Maybe the bridge in the external enclosure has died, but it might be
something as simple as a connector comming off internally, or as
bad as the hard drive spinning up but not responding to the bridge.
Quite a few of those external drives dont cool the drives properly
and Maxtor hard drives particularly dont like running too hot and
die like flys in that situation.
 
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