Where is my hard drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jay lunis
  • Start date Start date
J

jay lunis

HP desktop PC with Vista Home Premium
I do not know if my problem is with the PC, Vista, or my HD.
Bought the HP a few weeks ago and, today, got around to moving my
Western Digital USB HD to the new PC. Or, I tried to.
It was working perfectly in the old PC. Disconnected it and moved it to
the new PC. Nothing. Vista does not seem to detect I plugged a device
in a USB port. It 'found' the wireless mouse adapter when it was
plugged in and the bluetooth dongle when it was plugged in. But with
the USB HD . . . nothing.
Tried Control Panel|Add Hardware. No new Hardware Detected.
How do I troubleshoot this?
 
jay lunis said:
HP desktop PC with Vista Home Premium
I do not know if my problem is with the PC, Vista, or my HD.
Bought the HP a few weeks ago and, today, got around to moving my Western
Digital USB HD to the new PC. Or, I tried to.
It was working perfectly in the old PC. Disconnected it and moved it to
the new PC. Nothing. Vista does not seem to detect I plugged a device in
a USB port. It 'found' the wireless mouse adapter when it was plugged in
and the bluetooth dongle when it was plugged in. But with the USB HD . .
. nothing.
Tried Control Panel|Add Hardware. No new Hardware Detected.
How do I troubleshoot this?
Click to expand...

Any encryption on this drive? It may not let you move it to a new PC to
protect the content.

It's also possible that it found it without even showing any notification.
If you go into Drive Management do you see the drive there?

Unfortunately not sure of where to find this in Vista, but in XP you do:

Right click "My computer" -> Manage -> Disk Managment

Each drive will be shown on the right side, with drive letters and status.
 
Calab said:
Any encryption on this drive? It may not let you move it to a new PC to
protect the content.

It's also possible that it found it without even showing any notification.
If you go into Drive Management do you see the drive there?

Unfortunately not sure of where to find this in Vista, but in XP you do:

Right click "My computer" -> Manage -> Disk Managment

Each drive will be shown on the right side, with drive letters and status.
Click to expand...

Encryption - none

Does show up in Drive Management, I think. My USB is Western Digital.
The unknown drive in Disk Management is Western Digital. Both show 120G
HD. Sound like it to me. Here is the Disk Management data
Volume - blank
Type - Basic
File system - RAW
Status - Healthy (active, Primary partition)
Online
What have I learned?
 
Whenever I'm screwing around with accessory hard drives, I have to reboot
the PC for them to be recognized. When I do this, I have to go into the bios
and tell the machine not to boot from the accessory hard drive though
 
RBM said:
Whenever I'm screwing around with accessory hard drives, I have to reboot
the PC for them to be recognized. When I do this, I have to go into the bios
and tell the machine not to boot from the accessory hard drive though
Click to expand...
OK, rebooted. Still not showing in Explorer. No change in Disk Management.
 
jay said:
OK, rebooted. Still not showing in Explorer. No change in Disk Management.
Click to expand...
I've had the exact same problem and fixed
it by assigning a drive letter. I used Partition Magic,
but Disk Management will do the same thing.
ControlPanel/Administrative Tools/Computer
Management/Storage/DiskManagement
 
leave the drive attached, reboot the PC and immediately go into bios, and
see if the drive is recognized there
 
It's also possible that it found it without even showing any
Encryption - none

Does show up in Drive Management, I think. My USB is Western Digital. The
unknown drive in Disk Management is Western Digital. Both show 120G HD.
Sound like it to me. Here is the Disk Management data
Volume - blank
Type - Basic
File system - RAW
Status - Healthy (active, Primary partition)
Online
What have I learned?
Click to expand...

You have learned that your enclosure is working fine.

The problem is that this PC doesn't understand how the drive is formatted.
Did you need to use any utilities on the old PC to make the drive work? What
does the Disk Management say on the old PC for this drive?

If it were me, I'd simply plug back into the old PC and move all the files
off that drive to a safe location. Once that's done, plug into the Vista PC
and use the Disk Management to delete and recreate the partition on that
drive and format it. Once formatted you can move the files back.
 
Jay, I'm no expert so I don't feel competent in directing you into the bios.
You can screw up a lot of stuff there.
 
jay said:
Encryption - none

Does show up in Drive Management, I think. My USB is Western Digital.
The unknown drive in Disk Management is Western Digital. Both show 120G
HD. Sound like it to me. Here is the Disk Management data
Volume - blank
Type - Basic
File system - RAW
Status - Healthy (active, Primary partition)
Online
What have I learned?
Click to expand...
You need to assign a drive letter. Read my other post. It';s not hard.
 
Encryption - none
You need to assign a drive letter. Read my other post. It';s not hard.
Click to expand...

As long as the file system is "RAW", there is nothing you can do with the
data on that hard drive. You won't be able to assign a drive letter to it.
Your only real hope is to put it back on the old PC and copy the data from
the drive.

It's very odd that the old PC can use the drive, but not the new PC.
 
Somewhere on teh intarweb "Calab" typed:
Any encryption on this drive? It may not let you move it to a new PC
to protect the content.

It's also possible that it found it without even showing any
notification. If you go into Drive Management do you see the drive
there?
Unfortunately not sure of where to find this in Vista, but in XP you
do:
Right click "My computer" -> Manage -> Disk Managment

Each drive will be shown on the right side, with drive letters and
status.
Click to expand...

Wrong.

First question in this situation is; "Did you set the master/slave jumper to
the correct setting and is the drive on the right connector on the IDE
cable."

It's great that you're trying to help people and all that but it requires a
certain knowledge to do that...
 
Somewhere on teh intarweb "~misfit~" typed:
Somewhere on teh intarweb "Calab" typed:
Click to expand...


Please ignore. Apologies.

I missed the "USB" part in the above, my excuse, I'm in between jobs and am
having a quick sit-down. Obviously too much on my mind.

Oh well, back to the grindstone.....
 
~misfit~ said:
Somewhere on teh intarweb "Calab" typed:

Wrong.

First question in this situation is; "Did you set the master/slave jumper
to the correct setting and is the drive on the right connector on the IDE
cable."

It's great that you're trying to help people and all that but it requires
a certain knowledge to do that...
Click to expand...

Wrong.

First question is "did you actually read their posting?"

It's a USB drive that was functional on another PC. No master/slave settings
involved. No IDE connector involved.

BTW, there is no "right connector on the IDE cable". A properly jumpered
drive will work equally well on either plug.
 
It's a USB drive that was functional on another PC. No master/slave settings
involved. No IDE connector involved.
Click to expand...

So the drive is SATA inside the enclosure? If not, it'll
have jumpers though I guess they shouldn't need changed if
it had worked as-is previously.


BTW, there is no "right connector on the IDE cable". A properly jumpered
drive will work equally well on either plug.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but the spec clearly states not to put it in the
middle because if there is no device on the end there is no
termination and you'd get signal reflections that can screw
with data integrity, or really I mean cause resends.
 
Somewhere on teh intarweb "Calab" typed:
Wrong.

First question is "did you actually read their posting?"

It's a USB drive that was functional on another PC. No master/slave
settings involved. No IDE connector involved.
Click to expand...

Feel good Calab? I realised my error and posted a retraction and apology a
full 16 minutes before you chose to ignore it and reply to my previous post.
BTW, there is no "right connector on the IDE cable". A properly
jumpered drive will work equally well on either plug.
Click to expand...

So you disagree then agree in the same sentence. Properly jumpered being
master at the end, slave in the middle. If you change the jumper
*or*connector around without changing both then it's not "properly jumpered"
so you're in fact saying nothing at all.

What a 'complicated' person!
 
First question is "did you actually read their posting?"
Feel good Calab? I realised my error and posted a retraction and apology a
full 16 minutes before you chose to ignore it and reply to my previous
post.
Click to expand...

Sorry.. but I don't read ALL the threads in a group before I post.
So you disagree then agree in the same sentence. Properly jumpered being
master at the end, slave in the middle. If you change the jumper
*or*connector around without changing both then it's not "properly
jumpered" so you're in fact saying nothing at all.
Click to expand...

A properly jumpered drive has nothing to do with drive position. Jumper it
as master if that is what you want, then put it anywhere on the cable. Ditto
for slave drives.

I do admit that Kony has a point about signal reflections though. To avoid
case clutter, I always cut my cables short if there is only a single drive.
Never considered that the extra cabling could cause signalling issues.
 
Calab said:
As long as the file system is "RAW", there is nothing you can do with the
data on that hard drive. You won't be able to assign a drive letter to it.
Your only real hope is to put it back on the old PC and copy the data from
the drive.

It's very odd that the old PC can use the drive, but not the new PC.
Click to expand...

How do you know it still works in the old PC?
 
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