External drive not showing in "My Computer."

Hello, everyone.

I installed a small pocket-sized external hard drive this morning - just simply plugged it in and it worked perfectly under 'plug & play.'

However, after trying to do some file archiving with Acronis True Image, I could not get the drive to show up in "My Computer." I checked Device Manager and it says the 'device is working properly.' I have also tried uninstalling & reinstalling the drive. On installing, XP tells me that 'new hardware' has been found & then goes on to say that 'the device is ready for use.'

I have tried freeing up my 3 other USB ports to see if the other devices are drawing too much power and affecting the detection of the external drive, but it makes no difference at all.

The device does appear to working, but it does not show up anywhere on the computer, and thus, I can't access it at all. Under "My Computer" (Hard Drives), the only drive that shows up is my one and only drive - C: The icon for the external drive (F has completely disappeared.

Any help, as always, is greatly appreciated.

Dave.

 

Try this:

Right-click 'My Computer'. Go to Manage. Now look at Disk Management. If you see the drive there, you may need to assign a drive letter to it (and yes, I know Windows set it as drive F).

 

..... right click the drive and select 'initialise'.

 

Thanks, guys.

Well - I went into Disk Management and 'found' the external disk (F and it was listed as: 'unallocated.' I have tried several times to format it, but the formatting will not finalise - I get a message saying that the disk 'cannot be formatted.' It does show up in 'My Computer' now, so things are improving, I guess. I'll press on with it and keep you posted.

Many thanks,

Dave.

 

Now, does this external drive have an AC adapter? If so, you probably need to plug it in.

 

Hi, Big Bro.

No, the external drive does not have an AC adaptor - it is powered solely via one of 4 USB ports - it's only a small 40 GB pocket sized drive (Form Factor 2.5). The only only other port in use is the one for my broadband ISP.


Cheers,

Dave

 

Do Quick NTFS formatting........will definately go~!

For that....Right click on your drive and click format. Chek the Quick format box and press start.

 

Have you tried the drive on another system yet?

 

No, I'll try to do that tomorrow & I'll let you know the outcome, Big Bro.

Thanks,

Dave.

 

Well, folks - I have given up on getting the external drive to work as there seems to be a problem with the sectors of the disk. The people that sold me the disk have agreed to replace it - no quibble!

In a way of apologising for sending me, what almost certainely seems to be a defective disk, they have offered to send me a 40GB external hard disk to replace the 20GB one that I bought from them - so I guess some good as come out of it all!

The new drive will probably come formatted in FAT 32 - as did the first one they sent. Would it be an idea to reformat it as NTFS as I'm running XP, or does it really matter? Many thanks.

Cheers,

Dave

 

As a general rule, most external drives are formatted in FAT32 for compatibility with Windows 9x/Linux etc.

You could format to NTFS but I don't really see the point.
Obviously your main hard drive should be formatted in NTFS for enhanced security.

 

NTFS is a high-performance and self-healing file system proprietary to Windows XP 2000 NT, which supports file-level security, compression and auditing. It also supports large volumes and powerful storage solution such as RAID.
Full details: [link=http://www.ntfs.com]NTFS[/link]

 

Actually it's a low performance file system that fragments badly

I haven't laughed like that in a long time!

 

hmmm!...did you check the website? Here is another refference from [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS] wikipedia[/link] .