External HD problem..

[CraKaJaX]

I just plugged the drive into my sisters laptop (it's right next to mine, I'm fixing it for her) and it doesn't recognize the drive either. It shows the name of the drive in the Safely Remove Hardware list, and it shows it as an Unknown drive in disk management... but nothing under My Computer on both computers. I searched for driver updates, but nothing. Under device manager -> USB, it comes up as Mass Storage Device... with no problems and says the device is working properly. It was working fine last night as I backed up my sisters laptop with it. Any ideas?? It's a Maxtor 6L100P0 if that makes any difference. Thanks.

 

[Tarrant64]

If it says it's working properly you probably just have to change the drive mapping for it to show up in my computer.

If you go into Disk Management you can right-click on the 'unknown' drive and choose to change the drive letter. Usually this fixes the problem.

 

[CraKaJaX]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
If it says it's working properly you probably just have to change the drive mapping for it to show up in my computer.

If you go into Disk Management you can right-click on the 'unknown' drive and choose to change the drive letter. Usually this fixes the problem.

It's not an option for me. I can make a new partition, but that's kind of useless. The drive is coming up as "Online" now and not "Unknown" anymore... but still not showing up under my computer. Here's a picture of it all: Text. I tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling.. plugged the HD back in and it came up as new device detected, installed, and ready to use.. but still nothing. I took that screenshot right after it said that the device was installed and ready to use.

 

[corkyg]

Assume the external drive has its own power? Laptops often don't have enough in their USB ports to run a drive. Even 2.5-in drives sometimes require 2 USB port connections.

 

[CraKaJaX]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Assume the external drive has its own power? Laptops often don't have enough in their USB ports to run a drive. Even 2.5-in drives sometimes require 2 USB port connections.

Yes, the drive is plugged into a power strip that is plugged into the wall. The only other thing plugged into the strip is my cell charger which currently isn't being used.

 

[robphelan]

i'm having the exact same prob with my 2 ext hdds..

both WD, both powered by 110volt - 1 is 500Gb, the other 1 TB.

USB recognizes them, but they don't show up in Windows Explorer.

EDIT: also, I ran WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool - it sees the HDD as physical drive #2 - I can run tests successfully against it, but it isn't assigned a drive letter.

it seems that this is happening to only my ext hdds (including 8Gb thumbdrive) b/c my Iphone can synch without problems.

 

[robphelan]

ok, figured it out. I eventually did have to re-map the drives, as mentioned above, to new drive letters. I guess my network drives mapped to the same letters as the ext drives.

I went to administrative tools -> Computer management -> Storage -> Disk management.

here, I saw my drives. Rt click and re-map to letters not currently in use.

thanks for the help.
Robert.

 

[CraKaJaX]

I can't re-map the drive because it doesn't show up under the volume list. Here's another picture: Text. It's showing up at the bottom as being online, but in the top window it's not there. It needs to be in the top window in order to change the drive path. Also, next to it you can see that under properties for it it claims it's working properly, etc. I have no idea what's wrong...