Seagate SATA Drive Not Recognized

I have a Seagate SATA drive connected externally via a USB port that I use for backups and other archive storage. It has been working fine for >6 months. Turned on the computer last night - no external drive shows. I can hear the drive spinning normally, but WinXP doesn't see it. Put a different drive in the enclosure and it works fine. Tried external cables on the first drive; still nothing. Tried looking in Hardware Manager and it shows an "Unknown Device" in the USB Controllers section.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,

 

Looks like your hard disk has gone south. Try hooking it up inside the case & see if you can access it. Get off your data if possible.

 

I've been reading posts regarding "Initio Default Controller" causing the same problem. I checked Device Manager and sure enough I now have the "Initio" device. I tried uninstalling it, but WinXP puts it back. Any ideas how to lose it permanently?

 

Can you tell us more about Initio? I did a quick websearch and I could not see a link to computer hardware or HDDs.

 

Found this, don't know if it will help.

Re: Drivers not found for home edition external [ Edited ]
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04-06-2010 12:45 PM - last edited on 04-06-2010 12:47 PM

First thing, do you know what driver windows is saying it can't find? If its not even attempting to look for a driver I would swap out cables, that usually prompts windows to detect new hardware. When my MyBook essential wouldn't get recognized it was because I was missing a Driver for the Initio Default Controller. What I would do is unplug your USB from your PC and plug it into a new port which should start the new hardware wizard. Let it search windows update for the most reliable drivers. For me after restarting my PC a couple times and switching out USB cables and ports, when I finally hooked up my original USB cable from WD and restarted my PC suddenly was able to locate the driver for the Initio Controller (This driver is the software for how the SATA drive "talks" to the USB port, the actual Controller for WD is INIC-1610). When I looked at the driver details this driver was located at C:\windows\system32\Drivers\ivusb.sys

hope that helps

Also WDs latest external Hard Drives do not come with driver disk, they rely on WINDOWS pre-installed bank of drivers to use, so if you're having a driver problem then it may mean that something internally is wrong with your hard drive and its corrupted somewhere within the MYBOOK bios and you will need to replace it.

 

Here's a link
http://initio-usb-default-controller-driver-32.software.informer.com/

and another that describes my problem very well
http://social.answers.microsoft.com...e/thread/631cbe53-df54-48d1-a791-2a7be6f1833c

and 1 more from Microsoft
http://initio-usb-default-controller-driver-32.software.informer.com/

Thanks

 

Thanks, Hawk, you've given me some clues where to look. In my particular case a WD drive works, but another Seagate doesn't. It spins up, but is not recognized.