External hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter deebs
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D

deebs

How does one encourage Vista 64 bit beta 2 build 5384 to "see" an external
hard drive?

It would be fine were I able to backup personal data to an external drive in
anticipation of putting XP Pro back on this computer on a separate platter
with Vista 64 bit on the other three
 
I use an old Laptop HDD installed in a USB case. It works fine, Vista finds
it as soon as it is plugged in.
 
I use usb, firewire, and SATA drives externally without any issues. Is your
drive detected by other computers?
 
A good question!

I've popped in a brand new 250 GB Seagate IDE into an external USB
2.0/Firewire device and hoped that Vista would detect it, allow formatting
and so forth.

I don't really wish to take the computer to pieces, wire up an IDE cable,
format, rebuild the computer reassemble the external drive ... but it looks
I may have to do so?

I replaced the older 250 GB drive and the laptop sees it fine, Vista found
it eventually (older drive of the two)
 
I have an external USB drive that didn't work with 5384. It was recognized
but I couldn't access it and it didn't show up in Disk Management. With 5472
it works like a charm. You may have to wait for for RC1 to get it working.
 
Thank you Kerry - the thought of taking apart .. just to format ... well,
19th C rather than 21st wot?
A thought did occur to me, after taking the external device (in a state of
panic) from Vista machine to XP Home laptop, the firewire did not work.

This one has two firewire slots and one USB 2.0

I usually use the firewire andtried both to no avail. The USB, to much
releif, did work swell in the laptop
 
It sounds like you need to assign a drive letter and create a partition on
the drive. Click Start and right click on Computer. Click Manage on the
context menu. Click on Disk Management in the left pane. You should see an
unpartitioned drive in the main window (no drive letter). Right click on
its title bar and choose to assign a letter and create a partition. You can
also format at this time.
 
I have had some usb problems in builds previous to 5472 so you may well be
right. The usb issues have been pretty common in Vista so far. I have also
had trouble with flash drives from time to time.
 
Thanks for the pointers Colin.

I tried after encountering a UAC hurdle from a non-admin user ccount.

In an admin account the disk does not appear.

maybe even a hardwire to the IDE will flop too?


Perhaps turning UAC off will help?
 
You have to run Computer>Manage with a right click and "run as
administrator." But if you do not see a blank drive in Disk Management then
I am pretty sure it is the firmware in the drive enclosure and not the drive
itself. I agree with Kerry because I have seen this issue bugged a couple
of times on specific enclosures. If the drive is detected by an XP computer
and you have eliminated cabling and ports on the Vista machine, then it is
almost certainly the enclosure and you should report the brand and model
number to MS so they can work with the fabricator. If it is a generic
enclosure, then you need to look at the drive controller board inside.

As I recall, XP has wider tolerance for the electronics in these enclosures
than does Vista. An enclosure that has been working under XP fine might not
be within tolerance for Vista.
 
Colin:
A good example is the BYTECC enclosures with a hard drive instead of
a CD/DVD drive with x64, a blue screen every time it was plugged in.
 
I wonder if BYTECC will provide new firmware?

And then I have a cheap usb flash drive that locks up Vista but is fine when
I am in XP Pro x64 on the same computer. My other flash drives are fine.
 
I solved this one easy-peasy.

I went to some friends and explained the conundrum.

"No problems" they replied.

"Leave the disk with us and we'll format it for you"

I did, they did.

Now what about DRM, registration and finer security stuff now?
 
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