External harddrive not showing as a letter (USB)

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by Zer0ink, Jun 29, 2006.

  1. Zer0ink

    Zer0ink Regular member

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    Parts

    3.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive External Case SATA + IDE w/ Fan

    http://www.gizmo-link.com/images/hd35_sata_b.jpg


    and

    DiamondMax 10 SATA/150 120Gig Harddrive

    and

    Computer WinXP: Ultra ATA 133 hardrives, USB2

    Problem:

    When turning on or plugging external into computer the computer makes that "Too Doo" sound that XP makes when something gets connected however no letter gets assigned to the external drive.

    Doesnt show up under my computer or Disk Management

    Does show up in Device Manager under USB Controllers - USB Mass Storage Device and shows up in the Safly Remove Hardware Iconin system tray.

    Tried 3 computers same results

    Tried a Ultra ATA 133 and Serial ATA 150 with same results

    Any serious suggests to make device successfully operational?
     
  2. codydog

    codydog Regular member

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    I see it came with a driver. Did you put the driver in first, then connect when it asked? If you did, go to a command prompt, type>Set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1, hit enter, then type>Start devmgmt.msc. No period at the end. Then when the device manager loads, go to the top and under view, select show hidden devices. What this does is show what is ghosting in the device manager. Look under universal serial bus controllers, anything that is pale grey, that you know is not right may be suspect. If you see the HDD name, right click the name select uninstall. I would do this for allof the grey devices in usb. At worse you will have to put the identifying driver back in. Don't uninstall any of the usb controllers, unless you suspect them, and know how to reinstall the driver for them, just in case they are legacy. Maybe this will help.
     
  3. Zer0ink

    Zer0ink Regular member

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    I did as you said and the device shows up as USB Mass Storage Device

    The device shows grey when off and not greyed when on.

    Still no letter being designated.

    Thanks for your effort.

    Gonna try another hard drive one more time. Then a different enclosure. I have a feeling the enclosure may be defective.

    Any other ideas well be accepted gratefully.
     
  4. Zer0ink

    Zer0ink Regular member

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    Hooked up another hard drive (ide) and pinned it right this time and the enclosure worked fine.

    Must be the Serial ATA drive is messed up. At least I now know the culprit.

    Thanks for your effort.
     
  5. gmoyer60

    gmoyer60 Member

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    In Windows XP, on the desktop, right click on My Computer, click on Manage, click on Storage, then click on disk Management. any connected external drive via USB should show up there.(including every drive in your computer. Roms and hard
     
  6. scorpNZ

    scorpNZ Active member

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    The reason you have no drive letter me thinks is you have not formatted and created a partition,find in your comp "computer management", clik on "disk management" by rights it will show up there and you should be able to create the partition or better still go get symantec partition magic v8.0 it's an excellant software,ignore the symantec knockers ,if any of them post in here and put partmagic down they are ignorant and have no experiance with the suggested software ,for more help and advice go here,the first link is for radified forums and where you need to get too, the second link is in case the first don't work and look for "rad forum" at near top right ,these guy's specialise in the area you are having grief with

    http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi
    http://radified.com/index2.html

    after creating the partition you may have to restart the comp
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2006
  7. yellowsub

    yellowsub Member

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    You should have a disc that came with your hard drive. Once you have installed the hard drive in the case connect it to the computer through USB or firewire. Insert the disc that came with your HD and it will walk you through formating it, then XP will recognize the drive. It is really that simple.
     
  8. lotusdog

    lotusdog Member

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    hello i have a very similiar problem but i don't hav Xp and i have a western digital 250 gb SATA drive in an i-rocks 9400 HDD sata enclosure and i think i plugged it all in before i installed the driver cause i thought it didn't come with a driver at first and that i would not need it. any way when i install the reccomended driver after uninstalling the initial setup it says that there is an error because device was not designated and when i install the other available driver that was found the usb mass storage device driver it says everything is cool but nothing shows up. and i do not understnd the the fixes for the above solution and i am not sure if i should have started a new thread since this is like a new post, but it is similiar and the above problem was solved. i have windows 2000
     
  9. lotusdog

    lotusdog Member

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    for anyone in my shoes "view" the "disk list", "write signature", then "partition" and that should then proceed to assighning a letter to the drive, and formatting the drive.
     

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