External USB HD not recognised?

suppafly

My computer, a Dell Dimension 8800, doesn't recognise my external Hard drive for some reason. It hasn't ever recognised it. I've used the HD on lots of other computers and had no problems at all. Also i don't think its a problem with the usb ports as they work fine with other devices, such as my card reader. I have a small CD that came with it with drivers but it doesn't seem to have any drivers for Win XP. So if anybody knows how to fix this problem i would greatly appreciate it

Stephen

Got any network drives? I see this in work a lot. Network drives will be occupying the drive letter that the usb drive may have used in the past. The usb drive won't show up in explorer until you either disconnect the offending network drive, or change its drive letter in Disk Management.

Does it show up in device manager or the 'safely remove hardware' dialog?

milltown

I was just about to post much the same problem so if you don't mind I'll hop on here.

I have a brand new USB pen drive and a desktop running XP pro. When I plug in the drive windows plays it's two-tone "you've plugged something in" sound (twice, oddly), then I get a series of found new hardware balloons and finally " your new hardware is installed and ready to use" but it never shows up in 'my computer'.

LED on the usb drive flashes when I plug it in too, btw.

Edit:

I have no network drives. Two physical drives, C: and E: and one DVD drive
Disk management shows the USB drive with no letter assigned. When I assign it one (I:) it still shows in disk management, with it's drive letter, but can't be seen in My Computer. The device shows in device manager and safely remove...

Ruu_Old

OP, have you tried a different USB port? Does everything like ok in Hardware Devices in Control Panel?

Alun

milltown wrote:

Disk management shows the USB drive with no letter assigned. When I assign it one (I:) it still shows in disk management, with it's drive letter, but can't be seen in My Computer. The device shows in device manager and safely remove...

What about if you do this and then go to the Start Menu, choose Run... and then just type in I:\ and then hit OK? Does it open an explorer window with the contents of the disk?

Also try right clicking on the drive in Disk Manager and choosing Explore in the context menu. If you get an error message try it a second time (I've heard of this helping for some obscure reason!).

Stephen

Tried a different usb cable? I have a problem before with an external usb 2.0 host powered hard disk where windows made the usual new hardware noises but wouldn't let you use it. Turned out to be a flaky usb cable.