Help needed, XP won't recognise new external HDD
 

I've just bought an external USB case for the hard drive from my old laptop.

I've connected it to the computer according to the instructions, and it shows up in the device manager, but it doesn't appear anywhere where I can access it :wonder:

I don't really want to reformat it if I can help it, because I would like to access the data that's on it.

Is it an ide or sata hard drive ?

Just that I had problems with an ide hard drive after being put into a external case.
It was down to the jumper position on the hard drive.
I have 3 externals and for some reason one of them has to be in a different jumper position.
2 are in master and the other is in cable select.

does it show up in the disk managment tool?

Right click my conputer > Manage > Storge > Disk Managment

Can you change the drive letter?

is the usb port supplying enough power to the hdd?

It's an IDE hard drive, and it doesn't show up in the Disk Management section :(

There are no jumpers fitted across any of the 4 spare pins.

I would hazard a guess that its either a faulty USB caddy, or a simple installation error.

Unless you bounced the HDD of all four walls before installing it in the caddy!

I've tried searching for a solution via google, and it's apparently a common XP problem, but the various solutions are written in geekspeak, and I haven't a clue what they mean :wonder:

Have you tried putting a jumper across the pins to make it a 'master'.

According to the diagram on the HDD's label, leaving the 4 pins unconnected makes it by default a 'master', jumping pins 'A-B' makes it a 'slave', and jumping pins 'B-D' makes it 'cable select'.

It needs to be a slave,

Your boot disk (c:) is the master

D:
E:

etc, are slaves.

look in your settings to see if automatic drive num
bering is enabled


Mart

This help .... http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...disk-managemen ...?

Dave

OK, I've linked pins A & B and now I can populate the drive in device manager, but it comes up as 0Mb' and 'unreadable'. I know the drive functions as I've had it installed in the wife's laptop and its FAT32 configured.

Still nothing appearing in Disk Management :(

Fat 32 is for old OS's 98 etc

you can if i recall run it on XP, but you should be running it under NTFS

How many drives in your system?

was this drive an original, in which case it will have an active bootable partition.

if i recall, it would only need a normal partition.

Stick it back in the wifes PC, and find out if it still boots.

if there's nothing on it you want, stick it back in the new machine, and

format it.

If you want stuff off it, and you only have one machine.

you could try removing the good drive from the working machine, and

putting the "old drive in", boot of the old drive (it may need safe mode)

and if it boots, copy what you want to CD/DVD then take the drive out,

and replace the original.

Then put the CD/DVDs in and copy them to the new working unit.

If you get everything you want. then format the old drive in NTFS


(if it goes wrong, dont blame me :D:D

Mart

If you really dont want loose data on your HDD after converting from FAT32 to NTFS.Just try these steps.
1.,Go to Start find Command Prompt
2,C:\> CONVERT C: /fs:ntfs
Where C: is a name of the drive you want to convert.
After machine re-boot conversion process will start and you'll have your FAT32 converted to NTFS without of data loss.

Probably easist way how to convert Fat32 to NTFS without reformatting HDD.

OK, I don't really understand the differences here but, the HDD in question came from my old laptop, which was bought new with XP installed. The only reason I want to connect it to the PC is because the laptop's motherboard failed without warning and I need to recover (for Self Assessment purposes) some of the data on it.

Worst case, as Mart says I can install it again into the wife's laptop and recover the data that way, but if you knew the wife you'd know, that really is the last resort :Suspiciou


BTW: Before anyone else says it, yes I know I should have backed the drive up,
and yes I have learned my lesson :rolleyes: