Okay...here goes...when I plug in my external hard drive, Windows XP automatically recognizes and installs it, but the icon never appears in the My comuter window. The computer recognizes its presence in every obvious way but I can't view my files on the drive. I have tried this on multiple computers and have even taken it to a technician. Furthermore, he can see that there is data on the device. I think he's trying to get a few bucks from me so I don't really trust his advice. He says its either the enclosure that is causing the problem or he will need to backup the data on to a CD or another hard drive. The product is void of warranty so I have no other option but to do it myself or pay $100. And that's a lot of money to pay around Christmas time. Thank you so much in advance.
2006-12-04 04:55:51 · 5 answers · asked by martin s 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
Most external hard drives are just regular internal hard drives inside of an enclosure. Often if you open the enclosure, you can remove the hard drive and use it as a standard internal drive.
If it is the enclosure that is bad, then you should be able to access the hard drive if it was out of the enclosure. So try opening the enclosure, removing the drive, and hooking it up inside the PC instead.
Good luck....
2006-12-04 05:01:08 · answer #1 · answered by dewcoons 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i had a similar problem with an external hard drive. i think the problem was that i could write to it on one computer but couldn't see the data on another. it's been a while but i think it turned out that the files were hidden. i'm a little old school so what i did was open a command prompt and used the dos command ' attrib *.* -h /s ' once i changed to the right drive letter. after that, all the files were visible. hope this helps
2006-12-04 05:06:25 · answer #2 · answered by Dale B 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This may or may not be your problem, but something similar happens to me when I plug in my USB drive. Windows recognized the new hardware and tells me it's installed, but the new drive does not appears in My Computer.
Do you have any other external drives or network folders connected? If so, this external drive may be attempting to use the same drive letter as a network folder or another drive. You can resolve this problem by assigning the drive another letter. Instructions can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844
2006-12-04 05:21:41 · answer #3 · answered by fguy 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
you could try to buy another "enclosure" (with no drive) and transfer the drive into that and see if it works.
2006-12-04 04:58:23 · answer #4 · answered by rchlbsxy2 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the best place ever
2006-12-04 05:04:36 · answer #5 · answered by incognito 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋