External Hard Drive not recognised! Help!

Hi,

I have a Dell D600 laptop. I just did a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. I have updated with all the necessary updates and installed all the drivers needed. Everything works fine except for my external hard drive.

The drive is a Maxtor Dmax 250GB in an Icy Box enclosure.

Now when I plug it in it makes the usual sound for usb connections, but it does not appear in My Computer. In device mananger it shows up as USB composite device with the dreaded yellow ! mark next to it.

Now, the HDD works on two other PC's fine. The funny thing is is that every other usb device works fine on the D600 (mouse, usb mem stick, etc).

How the hell do I get it to work! I have installed windows 5 times now and still nothing!

Any help would help as I am at that point now where I will throw this laptop at a random person that passes my house!

Thnaks!

 

If the hard drive is formatted, and works on other computers, then you have a problem with your laptop.

Try another USB port. Also, check to see if there are updates for the motherboard firmware.

 

Check what format the Dell PC hard drive is, you may have set it to FAT32 when you did rebuild, if so reload Windows and format HDD to NTSC.

See if this allows you to then see the external dive.

FAT32 has limitations of size of drives it will see 'about 32GB I think', it may well be that as it is too large a size for FAT32 it does not recognize it as a valid hard drive device, this would explain why everything else appears to work okay on the USB and this doesn't.

 

Also make sure you have SP2 installed. Some devices don't work right without the USB 2.0 stuff in SP2.

 

here is a patch the tech support guys will give you, it works half the amount of times
http://www.mediafire.com/?a3zwvzmzcos



also what has proved to work with usb problems is a simple system recycle
turn off your computer and pull the plug out, allow the computer to sit for 30 minutes with out the plug in, this allows for the computer's motherboard to discharge all power from it, this solved my usb issue with my wireless adapter

 

It is formatted to NTSC and it does have SP2 installed. Every single update to date is installed.

I just tested my PSP and iPod too and that works fine on all USB ports so I don't think it is the laptop. It is really strange. Is there a way that I could at least get the laptop to recognise that there is the HDD plugged in so that I could format it?

I could format it on my desktop but I don't really want to do that if it isn't going to work!

Thanks again!

 

Easy way to confirm and if required change the hard drive setup to work on your pc, would be to dl acronis home 11 trial.
Then use the add new disk option under disk utilities.

You can do the same functions through windows, but using acronis is the easiest way to do it, just point - click and away you go.

If that can't see the hard drive then I can't see what it is, especially if it is already formatted and works 100% on other pcs.

 

I've been to 6 forums now and nobody has an answer to this bloody issue!

Code 10 = USB issue, tell me something I don't know!

 

Just a thought here , But i had trouble like that when i made a external hard drive. I had to keep moving the jumper to find the setting that would work with my computer.

 

Have fun trying to sort it.

I'm out of this thread as of now.

 

It has external power. It worked before I did the format, which indicates that the usb drive is not faulty. It recognises that something is plugged in, it just doesn't know what. I think that it is simply a case of windows not recognising that a drive is connected, the problem is how to get it to recognise what it is.

 

did you try changing the jumper, mine did the same thing. it was in master first i changed it to slave,didn't work, then i went to cable select and it worked.

 

hold am i missing something here? this is an external hardrive right?
there are no jumpers n a exteranl hard drive, they are usb devices
Ravenga- did you try the patch i gave you before?

 

He said "The drive is a Maxtor Dmax 250GB in an Icy Box enclosure"
In his first post.

 

Yeah tried the patch, no luck. To repeat, it did work fine before. I did a fresh install of XP Pro (downloaded every update there is to date!)and now it doesn't work. Seems like this has happened to others but there is no answer.

 

the ultimate fix: Fresh Install
sorry you had to do that but sometimes windows can be unfortunate like that!

 

folks. i think seagate/maxtor have a problem with some of their external h/drives. i have a problem with data slowly dissapearing from my seagate freeagent desktop 320g ext. h/drive. data was still there when i switched off the power to the drive or tried it in a different pc. i downloaded segates drive manager utility and ran a test when i was getting windows write delayed failed>f. result:device requires service, a return materials autorization (rma) is available. 5 year warranty on ext. h/drives.
when i ran the test when just plugged in, and before write delayed failed the result would be a healty drive.
try downloading their drive manager utility and see if yea can run a test. sounds like a familiar problem with segate/maxtor ext. h/drives

 

try opening your new thread, there rewrite you issues clearer (i couldn't understand your post all to well)
from what i understand windows is still picking up the drive but your having reading/writing/data save issues?

open my computer right click on the drive> and go "properties" then go tools and run a "Error-checking", it will most likely prompt for a reboot, then leave the external device plugged in and do as it says (reboot) open reboot it will scan for errors which may take a while


questions, comments, results?
post back!-tripplite

 

This works for XP. Click on START, SETTINGS, Control Panel, then select the icon for ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS, then select shotcut icon for COMPUTER MANAGEMENT. Then, look down the left side and click on the folder under STORAGE that is labeled as DISK MANAGEMENT. This will open up two windows to the right side. The window on top will show you current C:and D: drives and volume labels and sizes. The lower window will show all of the disks and how they are partitioned and labeled. Using the slider to the far right side of this window, pull down and search for the new disk in question. It may be all the way to the bottom and labled as DISK 6 or similar and not yet initialized. Now hover the mouse pointer over this DISK and right click. It will ask if you want to activate or initialize this drive. Click "OK". Now move your mouse to the small area to right where it now states something like "297GB unallocated" and right click and it will lauch a new window with the PARTITION WIZARD. Follow the instructions using default settings and you drive will be ready to be used! Hope this helps all of us without a whole lot of computer savy!