Hi everyone,
I'm trying to install a new wd usb hard drive without much success. win xp acknowledges it with yhe little sound when I plug it in but says there may be a problem. It shows up in device manager, but with the exclamation point ( yellow )I have upgraded drivers from the install cd And windows\ststem32\ drivers. I have been into the computer management & disk management trying to format & partition it, but it is not recognized at all there. I have been in the bios setup and enabled anything I thought pertained to setting this up. I'm out of ideas after 4 hrs of uninstalling & reinstalling. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Are you running service pack1 or at least an usb2.0 driver?

Thanks for the reply. No I don't have the usb 2.0 The hard drive says it will detect and run on the usb 1 , just slower.I have taken it to three friends and hooked it up to there systems with the same results everytime. I just bought a new pci card with the usb 2.0 on Ebay. So I will give it a try with that in a few days. Thanks again!

Guys
I have the same problem with adding a drive into an external enclosure, same thing , Device manager sees it but cannot see it on my computer and I am running XPsp1 tried disk management and connot even find it. Tried on a new machine at work , nothing , tried another drive , same thing, My IT guy thinks it is a problem with USB to ATA circuit baord inside drive. The device amanger see it but no drivers are loaded , right? , My IT guy suggested getting a one touch maxtor drive? What do you have ?

Check the jumpers. Some external enclosures work fine with CS some require the jumper be set to Master. It also depends on the hard drive.

I did check the jumpers at one time. the enclosure manfacturer says to put the drive in the master config , I did it and rebooted . The computer hung until I turn off the external closure switch and the computer booted up. I tried the slave comfig and the comuter booteeed up but same problem. I tried cable select and it did not boot the computer. I did try to put back into master config . and turn the enclosure when computer was booted, It sees the drive in the Device manager and it sees it in the safely remove devices . but no go in the my computer icon . I tired the computer mangement / disk management and it could not see it. I had a /IBM dekstar 40 gb GXP and I tried a maxtor 6.4gb drives , same problem . I tried an cdr drive and it recognized it right away. the IBM disk works in my other system in the slave mode connected to the ata cable. . I noticed that when I look under Device manger when the ext drive is plugged in and recognized . I click the Icl30540-avv07-USB in the Device manger and it says that the drivers are loaded for this device , I looked under the drivers tab and it specifys some type of driver, with a path to it.
I updated the drive and it says that it cannot find and better drive at installed one , so I use the current driver and it stills says that the drivers are not installed for this device.

So you tried an IBM and a Maxtor on your USB and they both exhibited the same behavior?

You said you could connect both HD's to a computer on the IDE Controller and they both worked fine?

Could be incompatibility between the USB/ATA chipset in the enclosure...but I would run diagnostics on the HD's first.

I had the same problem with an external drive.It was there on devices but wasn't recognised in explorer. My soltuion was to run diskmgmt.msc at the run command. You can then see your drive. In my case the drive was descibed at "dynamic". I changed that to "basic" under action. I then clicked the body of the window which contains the drive info, then right click and either format or pertition, choose a letter for your drive and you're away. Hope this helps
Chris

I too had the same problem,se Post #154484:
- An external drive seen in Device Manager but not in Explorer
I ran the file diskmgmt.msc exactly as suggested and now I can see the new external drive in explorer. It worked...Thanks.

I have the same problem - I had a secondary internal HDD with very useful data from my previous computer (Win 2000) that I had given restricted access to the Adminstrator (myself) as the comp. was accessed by others as well.

I got a new laptop (Win XP, SP2) and I got an external USB hard drive enclosure for this HDD and I tried the above - except that I don't want to format or partition my HDD as I have very valuable data in it.

It does not work.

Is there a way around without formatting it?

I see the disk in the device manager, but cannot access it - Message is "G:\ is not accessible. Access is Denied".

Please help. (I first used my friend's external USB hard drive enclosure kit with my new laptop, it did not work and I went and bought a new USB hard drive enclosure kit - Adaptec, but still the same problem.)

My jumper is on Master and I also tried assigning a new drive letter manually, but of no avail.


[Edited by tritan001 on 2005-07-10 19:51:32]

[Edited by tritan001 on 2005-07-10 20:23:52]

I went through the pain just like everbody else this morning but everthing I tired was nothing but failure. Here what I did today when I put my brand new WD120 in an Adaptec enclosure. I pull the jumper (might need it someday so I save it by taping it to the HHD itself) and hook everything up. Once I power it up, I follow the instruction from Oscar999 above and the system recognize it rightaway. In fact, I partition it right there and then, too. In your case, you might want to back up all the files first (things might hit the fan) and then do what I did. Good luck.

Hi
(Windows XP)
Did you try to initialise your harddrive in Disk Management? It is under Computer Management --> Storage
You see it there, all you need to do is initialise then format it etc. Hope this information helps!

kira12712

Hi, all. New here and need some very similar help.

I am trying to instal an MDT 120G external hard drive (usb). The first time I attempted to format the drive, the process went all the way to completion and then gave an error saying drive was unable to be formatted. I unfortunately didn't save the exact message like I wish I would, but it was pretty close to that. Now when I try to format the drive, it gets to a 2% completion status and just hangs. No error, nothing. The device manager indicates the drive is working properly and I am actually able to see it via windows explorer. When I attempt to access it I get a message saying drive needs to be formatted and asks if I would like to do that now. When I click OK, same problem, formatting begins and hangs soon after.

I am really hoping someone can help me, I needed the external space yesterday!

Thanks, all!

Hi

Had the same problem of formatting and found that I got an error every time. Go to control panel administrative tools computer management. Click on disk mamagement and all your drives should appear on the right. Right click on your external drive and click on create partition. If you want a partitiion bigger than 60Gb you need to use NTFS file system and not FAT32. After partitioning you can format by right clicking on the drive to assign a letter etc. Hope this helps

I had the same problem with my external enclosure. Dont listen to the manual when it says to use the master jumper. It depends on the harddrive that you are using, i put mine on cable select and it worked fine. I also replaced the IDE cable inside the enclosure and that seems to make a difference for mine. if its possible the best way to format it is to plug it into a pc and do it from there with partition magic or something like that.

good luck.

Thanks Oscar999,
I have a removable USB memory drive which had set its unreadable self up as drive E: and appeared so in Disk Management. I was able to see its contents only once after uninstalling, reinstalling, etc.
On the machine there is already an existing E: network shared directory which was confusing XP, so I was able to use the Change Drive and Paths... option to change it to drive R: for Removable.
It can now be explored. Yey!

I had the same problem as most people, I could hear the ding when the external drive was pluged in and I could see the device loaded in device manager..

My laptop crashed and I wanted to retrive data that was already on the disk..

Right click on My Computer and select manage from the popup menu.

Select Disk Management find your extrnal drive usually listed as the Hd name.. Right click and select import then select import on the other screen that pops up.. and bingo you now have a drive letter. without having to format..

I hope this helps..

Thanks,
David Eaton
http://www.phprocket.com