Windows Vista Initialize Disc Vista Ultimate

I have plugged in a ROCK ext CD. USB2. Vista's Storage/Disc Management sees it as Disk2 unknown unreadable. I do not get the option to initialize the disc. The software supplied states it needs to be initialized. How do I initialize a disk in Vista?

 

Hi and welcome to the BBS,

You may need to give us more details.

It is a external CD/DVD drive (you say "ext CD ")?

What does the "software" do? Was that software supplied with the drive? Is the software made to run on Vista (check the system requirements)?

I might suspect Vista is seeing the drive/disk as fixed and not removable.

Some suggestions...

You may need to use the Add Hardware wizard in Control Panel to get the drive to be identified correctly (or find the drive in Device Manager and update/reinstall it).

Vista has a new security method, Bitlocker. Are you running it?

Software may need to be run "as the administrator" (right-click on the executable).

Check Vista compatibility.

Matt

 

Hello and thanks for the reply
It is an external CD drive which if I can get going I will take it apart and change it out for a DVD drive. It is sold by Rock. It has external power, usb2 and 1394 sockets. USB 2 input.
The software that came with the unit gives drivers for win98 but says win2000 or XP should not require the software to be run, however, the drive must be initialized before you can see it as a drive.
The unit is pre Vista.
When I plug it in it is installed by Vista as a USB mass storage device.

When I go into Vista's Storage/Disc Management it is seen as Disk2 but unknown unreadable. It is not seen anywhere else ie explorer or Nero.

The software supplied says that in 2000,XP that I should be able to initialize the disk from Storage/Disc Management to right click, select initialize and the drive will be allocated a letter etc and work from there.
With Vista I do not get the initialize option.

I've done the update driver and remove / add hardware. It is plugged to my laptop with only me as administrator. All windows security apart from logging on is turned off.
Stumped

 

I may not be much more help (if I did)...mainly because I have not used external optical drives, but if everything is "normal" I don't think Vista would normally have a problem with it.

In a search I came up with this:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61102
Look at the last few paragraphs. For your situation, I expect the system is seeing the media as blank.

Is the drive a CD-RW? Otherwise a CD-ROM drive may not be able to recognise "burnt media ". [Try loading a manufactured CD disk into the drive.]

The term Initialize is used for setting up blank disks. Edit: don't dismiss that the "software" cannot use the Vista system to read the drive correctly or has made the drive "unreadable" itself.

Matt

 

Considering that it uses an IDE to USB adapter, I might wonder if that would work,
BUT,
thinking about it, is the external case made for swapping the drive (universal)? I expect a DVD drive will have higher power requirements than the CD drive. If the power adapter could not supply the required power, you may risk damaging the drive or burning out components. Maybe something to bare in mind.

You have tested the drive by connecting it to a Win XP system (considering if one is available)?

Matt

 

Initialize drive in Vista

Hello all
The unit has been going at my business on XP and worked fine.
Now that portable HDD and Thumb drives are so cheap we have moved to that technology.
I thought I might take it home to use.
It seems to be doing everything right except that the OS doesnt see it as a drive & assign it a drive letter even though it knows it is there when I go into disc management. That is frustrating.