usb hard drive found but not visible

  • Thread starter Thread starter tamas080
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tamas080

Hi everyone,

Wondering if anyone can help.

I have an external Hitachi Deskstar 3.5" hard drive mounted in a an
external enclosure made by Dabsvalue.

When I plug it in and power it up, Windows finds a USB mass storage
device and gets as far as identifying it as a hard drive, but then does
not show the drive in the My Computer folder.

The same happens whether I plug it into the computer's original USB1
port or into a PCMCIA USB2 hub, for which all the relevant drivers are
installed.

The enclosure did not come with any drivers: the documentation said
this was not necessary under XP SP2.
From googling through this newsgroup, it seems that the drive may not
Click to expand...
be formatted. Is this possible, and in this case what can I do about
it? Are there any other possible explanations?

Really grateful if anyone has any suggestions,

Regards,

Thomas
 
Hi everyone,

Wondering if anyone can help.

I have an external Hitachi Deskstar 3.5" hard drive mounted in a an
external enclosure made by Dabsvalue.

When I plug it in and power it up, Windows finds a USB mass storage
device and gets as far as identifying it as a hard drive, but then does
not show the drive in the My Computer folder.
Click to expand...

Check that it is set to master. Think that some of those external boxes
have problems with slave or cable select. If not formatted it should still
show up in those disk management tools (but not on my computer)
 
Hi everyone,

Wondering if anyone can help.

I have an external Hitachi Deskstar 3.5" hard drive mounted in a an
external enclosure made by Dabsvalue.

When I plug it in and power it up, Windows finds a USB mass storage
device and gets as far as identifying it as a hard drive, but then does
not show the drive in the My Computer folder.

The same happens whether I plug it into the computer's original USB1
port or into a PCMCIA USB2 hub, for which all the relevant drivers are
installed.

The enclosure did not come with any drivers: the documentation said
this was not necessary under XP SP2.

be formatted. Is this possible, and in this case what can I do about
it? Are there any other possible explanations?

Really grateful if anyone has any suggestions,

Regards,

Thomas
Click to expand...
Start = Help & Support, search for 'disk management'.
Mike.
 
Thanks for the suggestion.

Pardon my naivety, but is this a setting on the ATA to USB gateway
board or on the drive itself? And how do I go about changing the
setting? I didn't notice any jumpers on the board, and there's no
bundled software with which to do it.
 
Hi everyone,
Wondering if anyone can help.

I have an external Hitachi Deskstar 3.5" hard drive mounted in a an
external enclosure made by Dabsvalue.

When I plug it in and power it up, Windows finds a USB mass storage
device and gets as far as identifying it as a hard drive, but then does
not show the drive in the My Computer folder.

The same happens whether I plug it into the computer's original USB1
port or into a PCMCIA USB2 hub, for which all the relevant drivers are
installed.

The enclosure did not come with any drivers: the documentation said
this was not necessary under XP SP2.

be formatted. Is this possible, and in this case what can I do about
it? Are there any other possible explanations?

Really grateful if anyone has any suggestions,
Click to expand...

First, see if external disk is visible in Device Manager:
Run | devmgmt.msc | expand "Disk drives" branch
do you see additional disk there?

If yes, you may try to assign a logical drive letter to it:
Run | diskmgmt.msc | select partition on USB drive | right-click | Change
Drive Letter and Paths...
and assign a new letter to it.
 
Thanks to all of you. Formatting solved the problem. I thought
formatting was a thing of the past!

Thomas
 
Thanks for the suggestion.

Pardon my naivety, but is this a setting on the ATA to USB gateway
board or on the drive itself? And how do I go about changing the
setting? I didn't notice any jumpers on the board, and there's no
bundled software with which to do it.
Click to expand...

the jumper would be on your deskstar drive. just make sure it is master and
you should be ok
As mentioned by Michael, the disk management wizard should be able to spot
the drive even if it is unformated. Bring up that disk management program
START-CONTROL-ADMINISTRATIVETOOLS and poke around and see if an unknown
drive is listed somewhere.
 
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