My external USB drive works on my sisters computer, why won't it work on mine??

Question

I bought an external hard drive enclosure (for a normal hard drive) to make it an external USB hard drive. It was not getting recognized on my computer and it would not let me reformat it when i went through the disk manager (it said something about the partition not being enabled, but according to the properties it was enabled and i could not create a new partition). I tried doing all this on my sisters computer (a dell laptop) and it worked fine! i was able to reformat it too. after reformatting the drive i am still having the exact same problems on my sony laptop. What is the problem? different version of windows? oh ya, i tried the drivers from windows as well as the drivers included on the disc that came w/ the enclosure. no dice. its gotta be something w/ my computer. where do i start?

as far as i know my computer DOES allow plug and play devices. it has USB 2.0 and i have used that to operate my gameboy flash card (burn games to flash card to play on a gameboy)

Answer 1

On your PC make sure that your PC has NTFS file system. Also, go to the device manager and select your PC, it being at the top. Then do a scan for hardware changes under the Action menu. See if the drive is detected. Use the Administrator tools in Control Panel to open Disk Manager. In this utility right click on the drive and create a new partition / or format the empty partition, but only after you activate it. Partition all you want but activating it allows you to format and make the drive bootable/recognized to put stuff on it or read and write on. Additionally Abundance of USB devices will suck up resources for USB devices disableing PDAs and Extrenal drives as not connected. If this is an issue go to the root hub in Device Manager and uninstall root hub or and devices under it until it disapears, then restart your PC with only the esential USB components.
OK GOOD LUCK!

Answer 2

This is tricky as I only know a little about the USB interface with Hard drives. Basically though, I would just make sure windows sees the hard drive and auto installs the drivers. I would definately use the CD for this unless windows sees it. Also, if you are booting up with the USB hard drive I dont belive it works, but I have never tried it yet. If just plugging it into a computer like a flash drive, it should work fine. I notice you say a sony laptop. Laptops are known for not working with everything like a normal pc, so I would have to say that might be the problem. Also, sony computers dont work well with USB hard drives.

I would restart the pc with the cd in the CDROM and the hard drive connected Via USB. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I just think that there might be some problem with your USB. Try uninstalling the USB from the device manager and re-installing it back again. Still if it is not working, then there is a problem then you might have to replce the USB.

Answer 4

There are two USB external hard drive, one is for 2.5" and one is for 3.5".

Really, it doesn't recognize SOMETIMES if you have older or LOW SPEED computers (i.e. lower than 1Ghz speed). Another thing is if you have lower than Windows XP, you have to install drivers for it to work.

You have to be careful when dealing with 3.5" USB external hard drives as they are just using ADAPTER which is not yet stable. I'm getting some problems also with 3.5" hard drives, that my SAFE solution is slave it to my desktop pc. If you are using laptop, consider connecting both computers by LAPLINK cable or USB~USB Direct Cable adapter.

Answer 5

Probly cause your USB port is 1.1 and hers is 2.0, so you may have to upgrade, about 50 dollars at office depot for a usb 2.0 pci card.

Answer 6

maybe old operating system, sisters has new operating system, use install disc. to install correct drivers.

Answer 7

try to check if your USb is working correctly

Answer 8

does your comp allow plug and play devices?