Portable HDD not recognised in xp or vista!

[Rossi46fan]

Hi there
I wanted to transfer files from my pc onto a friends seagate portable HDD but when i plugged it in windows did not assign a drive letter for it so it was impossible to transfer the files ,we then plugged in to his laptop and the result was the same,my pc is xp pro and the laptop is running vista premium.In boths cases the led on the hdd lit up and windows installed device drivers but does not show the hardware in my computer.The only files on the portable hdd are movies and tv shows recorded via a settop freeview box with a usb port.Is it because these files have been put on and organised in a file structure that windows does not recognise? Just a guess,can anyone shed some light on this?

[J0K3R]

if it is a usb bus powered drive it just maybe that the usb port may not be providing enough power to run the drive correctly. I have seen cases where my bus powered drive has shown a light but the port wasnt providing enough power to run properly, if this is the case you can get a twin usb cable where you plug both into the computer using 2 usb ports and on the other end there is the one connection into the hard drive

[Rossi46fan]

You could have it nailed there but if your right then isnt it strange that the usb port on the settop box provided enough power to record onto it? Anyhow i will definately check out the twin usb cable you mentioned,thanks for the feedback