Non recognition of external HDD

I have recently connected and installed an external HDD to my PC which was installed and recognised having a drive letter alotted to it. The following day and ever since whilst the Device Manager records a USB 2 mass storage device and a more specific ID as a drive in its own right the alotted drive letter had disappeared and there is no record of it in Drive Manager. I have uninstalled and reinstalled many times. I have attempted to return to a time when the drive was recognised using a restore point but without sucsess. Can anyone advise me with regard to this pain in the neck? Many thanks.

 

Sorry! I now realise that my first post is in the wrong place.

 

Hi romaniaexpress and welcome.

This section is a good place for the thread unless something comes to light later that points to a hardware error.

You say that Device Manager does see the device as USB storage if I'm reading correctly. Can you read/write to it now?

 

romaniaexpress--The external drive has to be turned on to be recognized. So be sure it is on when you boot.
Now do you see it when you open MyComputer?
In Device Manager it would probably be under Disk Drives. When I look in Device Manager, it does not identify any of my drives with a drive letter, but rather provides the name of the drive (manufacturer and model).
Most importantly, are you able to access it?

 

The drive is not shown in Drive Manager but is shown twice in Device Manager. First as a USB mass storage device and second as a drive. It isn`t shown in My Computer. What puzzles me is that it was running OK and then it vanished from the face of the PC. The drive isn`t switched on when I switch on the PC `cos I think it`s trying to bott from the external and it takes forever. I am using a Netgear router but with only one PC at present. Can this have any baring on it? Someone has mentioned drive mapping but I know very little about that. But I come back to the point that it has been working.

 

drive maping is if you were trying to map it from another computer on the network not the one it is locally connected too. I have had a similar problem with a jump drive I have and all I did to fix it was unpluged it from my computer unistalled the usb driver through device manager (I unistalled all the usb drivers) then restart and plug it back in. ever since my jump drive has worked fine. hope this helps

 

Anything`s worth a try at this point. I`ll let you know how it goes. By the way UH60pilot I notice your into aquariums. Me too. Discus. How about you?

 

We could be getting there. The PC now recognises the external HDD and has allocated a drive letter which again is strange as I have followed the procedure of uninstalling the drivers before with no luck. Anyway now windows reports that formatting the external disk is unsuccesfull each time I attempt to do so. What do you think?

 

Just booted up. It`s gone again! The drive has disappeared again just as before. It`s in the device manager as a USB mass storage device and as a drive??????????????

 

Romaniaexpress, hi I have a external USB HD and have similar behaviour.
In my case if the external HD is turned on at boot time it will not show up in W. Explorer XP Pro nor in the Device Manager.
But once the system is operational and I turn it on it will register like yours 2 times in Device Manager as a HD with the drives ID and in USB as a mass storage dev.
Windows had given it a drive letter when first installed and it always goes back to it when it shows up in My Computer and it works ok then.
I have gotten used to this strange behaviour and just flick it on when I want to use it.
Hawk22

 

I have had the same issue with an external if I left it on and connected during bootup it's kind of a pain in the butt but just gotta remember to turn it off. you could try just right clicking on the drive from control panel or if you want to try from the command prompt that's always an option too just make sure you get the drive letter right And yes I am into aquariums I have had discus before but moved from that to Saltwater and from a recent move have not had the money to put back into a decent saltwater tank so I have a community tank atm.

hope that helps

 

romaniaexpress--I have not had a problem with Windows recognizing my USB External Hard Drive, whether I turn it on before boot or after, but go for the idea of waiting to connect until after boot.
P.S. Have you asked the manufacturer of your PC whether you have latest BIOS? Maybe just go to the manufacturer's site and look for Upgrades, Drivers, etc. I am not sure that Windows PC's and USB External Hard Drives are that compatible, yet.

 

Since I last posted I`ve walked away from it. That`s how I handle it sometimes. Anyway upon returning to the problem I swapped HDD`s over to check that the new Maxtor was working OK. It was. I reassembled the external HDD and re inserted the original drive into the PC and connected all leads. Booted up and (as some of you have suggested) waited for the PC to do its thing and then switched on the external drive. Lo and behold the PC recognises the drive and has allocated a letter to it. I shut down the PC and repeated the process with equal success. I`m sitting on my excitement as this is exactly what happened the first time but the following day the PC and the external weren`t speaking again. I`ll let you know. Its now bed time.

 

Good Morning! (in UK anyway) The sun really is shining and my PC and external HDD are talking. All I can say is that I have( I think) found a formula for having both drives communicate but it`s not as per the instructions from the supplier. It seems to be fine. Thanks for all the support and advice which has been great. I`m sure I`ll be back.

 

romaniaexpress--Tell us what you did. And if you learn how to boot from the external drive, let us know that, too!!

 

welshjim, the one significant thing I am doing different from the installation instructions is that the drive is not switched on before the PC. If I switch on the external HDD first then it seems to confuse the PC and the Disk Management utility takes forever to install and the external HDD is not recognised with a letter alocation. However it is shown in the Device Manager as a USB Mass Storage Device and as an individual drive BUT no drive letter. So for me and my HDD the rule is switch the PC on first and allow it to complete the boot procedures in full THEN switch on the external HDD.

 

romaniaexpress--Thanks for your post. What works is what counts!!