USB Hard Drive Not Recognised

[zznw4m]

I've inadvertantly stumbled on the solution (to my problem at least). I've discovered that if I plug both of the USB leads from my external drive into the hub the problem disappears.

This seems to indicate that the original problem was to do with lack of power, since the second USB lead is in fact the power lead.

Silly me!

[Rogue5]

Try changing the drivers for the USB root hub in device manager. I had problems with Dell recognizing devices at boot up including digital cameras.
Once we changed the USB root hub drivers all problems disappeared.

[neilogden]

I have a problem more or less the same. I have two USB external HDDs, both were happly plugged into the USB ports, one was plugged into the front and the other into one of the ports on the back. Then suddenly for not apparent reason, they were lost by my computer. They cannot be detected and I just get that error. I also have a USB memory stick and that comes up with the same. As far as I can see everything else on USB works fine.

I have a USB hub, which is USB 1.1. That normally has another USB external HDD and my memory stick plugged into it, the slow speed doesn't greatly matter for these two, for the first two it does. However when I plug the two that stopped working into the hub, they work and are detected fine.

So I have the hard drives working but slow, but I totally frustrated by the whole problem, why it should occur just like that out of nothing, and what to do to put it right.

If I went out and purchased a USB 2 hub, and used that for these two drives, I wonder if that would work. It's a workaround, , but I don't understand why it's happened. Help!!!

Neil

[zznw4m]

Well I've still got the same problem. But, guess what! I've upgraded to SuSE Linux 10.1 and I've got the same problem with that. It's easier to diagnose with Linux though. It seems that the /etc/fstab file fails to load the mount points and I think that if I remove the USB drive from this file, it will not try to load them and hopefully the USB service will then recognize the hardware and load it properly. Is there something like the /etc/fstab for Windows?

[zznw4m]

It worked! So all I need now is some way of applying the same principal to Windows. Although I might try Windows Vista Beta 2 to see if that fixes my problem.

I'll let you all know.

[TimWhite22]

I'm having the exact same problem, i just installed Ubuntu and now windows wont recognize my external hard drive except in device manager.

[dj0114]

Is the hard drive partitioned and formatted yet? If not do this:

1. Connect the USB enclosure to the computer and turn on the computer.

2. Go to Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management. In the Computer Management window click on Disk Management.

3. In the Disk Management window you should see 2 hard drives. Disk 0 – that’s your primary hard drive and Disk 1 – that’s the hard drive in the USB enclosure. For the Disk1 you’ll see the HDD size inside the bar and also it should say Unalocated. It means that the new hard drive is not partitioned and formatted.

4. Right click on the unallocated space and click on new partition entry, the wizard for creating a new partition on the hard drive will appear. In most cases you should chose: Primary partition, partition size would already in there (entire drive), assign any free letter or leave it default, file system NTFS (default), check the Perform a quick format (faster) box, NEXT and FINISH. It might take some time. You’ll see that the LED on the USB enclosure (if you have any) will start flashing.

5. After it’s done, you should see that Disk1 says: New Volume, HDD size, and Healthy.

Now, if you go to My Computer you should see the second hard drive and you can use it as a regular drive.

[mallery855]

iam havin a similer problom with my "ali standerd enhanced pci to usb host controller" usb card is being sean but if i plug anything in to it like a joystick,speedpad n52 even my digital camera nothin will work now if i plug any of them in the mother board usb ports it will see them and work
i have tryed updateing drivers and rolling them back also tryed uninstalling & reinstalling it and it finds the new hardware and put the drivers in the device manager says thay are working properly so how can i get this part to work P.S. iam fairly new at computers so please explaine
it so i can under stand it

[s_madhira]

The following worked for me
i.Close all explorer windows
ii. open task manager and kill the "explorer" program
iii. in task manager select "File--New Task(Run)-- explorer
and the USB drive appeared in explorer