Ive got a 60gb hard drive on my laptop but last year I need lots more space so bought an external 200GB HD connected by USB2 lead.

The problem is my laptop is not now recognising the external HD. I am getting the "ding dong" on the laptop to show a USB lead has been inserted but its not going through the Autoplay "what do you want to do with this drive" window thing.

I have tried other USb devices and they are recognised with no problem, so I dont think its the actual USB ports.

Any ideas on how to get the HD recognised?

( its an xp home machine and the drive is a seagate in an oker box )

Ive got a 60gb hard drive on my laptop but last year I need lots more space so bought an external 200GB HD connected by USB2 lead.

The problem is my laptop is not now recognising the external HD. I am getting the "ding dong" on the laptop to show a USB lead has been inserted but its not going through the Autoplay "what do you want to do with this drive" window thing.

I have tried other USb devices and they are recognised with no problem, so I dont think its the actual USB ports.

Any ideas on how to get the HD recognised?

( its an xp home machine and the drive is a seagate in an oker box )

Can you see the new drive letter in the Explorer window? If so then it is not formatted and XP won't know what to do with it. Just right click on the new drive letter and select format. Just be sure that it is the correct drive letter.

You may have to map the drive to a letter first, right click on the "my computer" icon (don't open "my computer", just right click on the icon to open a menu) and clcick on map network drive, and messing around from there should get you started)

I asume you are using windows xp.

Now since this is a new drive, it is probably not partationed.

You need to partation this drive first.

start > Administrative tools > Computer Management > Disk management

on the bottom right section you will see the list of disks connected.

there will be Disk 0 and Disk 1. *probably*

one of them will be 200GB and it should say unpartationed or something

you need to right click and make a partation. There would be some option to assign a drive letter there.

EDIT:-

visit http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/how..._disk_mgmt.html for step by step instructions.

It is not a new blank drive, this is a drive that I bought last year and up until 2 weeks ago I was using with no problem.

does this USB work well on other PCs? you need to test this.

Just last week a friend got his USB drive over cause no computer was accepting it, i opened it, noticed that the actual hard disk had gotten loose out of the connector, fixed it and started working.

You have confirmed that your USB port is working, now the problem may be in the Drive or your drivers...

It could well be a power problem - as in not enough.

has your usb lead for the HD got 2 plugs on one end? plug them into 2 seperate usb ports to increase the current provided to the HD.

The power for the external drive is a mains lead. The HD is on, the lights are on and the fan is working but ......

Yes, I have tried the external HD on another pc and it still doesnt work

Take a look at the back of the hard drive and see which pins the jumper is on. There should be a little diagram on the top of the hard drive telling you where the jumper is supposed to be.

have you dismantled the external case and checked to plug connection as suggested by SMS ?

it is quite easy - and all you have to be is careful , not touch the exposed area of the circuit board and not try and force anything and you should be ok.

if you do this and check the connection between the case and the hard drive and it still does not work , you might need to get it checked in a desktop computer just plugged into an IDE channel.

is it a laptop drive or a desktop hard drive ?

I take it the HD contains some data which you are keen to access/recover?

The way I understand it, you used to be able to use this external drive, but now you can't. You can't use it on another computer, so computer problem goes out the window. You used to be able to use it, so jumpers are not the problem. If the light is green on the box, then the harddisk should be working (would be red otherwise, yes?). You could try finding a desktop and putting the drive in to see if it's working. If it is, then the fault is with the enclosure.

Hi

Just wondering. Do you have win xp sp2 installed and does your computer support usb2/hispeed or does it support the old usb. If thats the case you might need to buy a pci card with usb hub that supports usb2 for your computer. There is some known issues with xp sp2 on running on old motherboards/mainboards.

This could be an old BIOS that is not capable of recognizing big drives.

Check your device manager, you may have conflicts.

Connect it, then go to control panel, system, hardware tab, device manager and look for yellow exclamation...post a screenshot if you can even if you dont have yellow flags.

Apparently bluebear doesn't have the courtesy to tell if he got his problem solved.