External HDD Not Recognized?

Question

Hi, I recently purchased an external USB HDD, but have problems with it. My PC (Windows XP Home) does not recognize it. Vendor says that drivers installation is not required for XP. Please, advise

Answer 1

Okay, interesting answers. True, the USB port may be bad, but you can test that by plugging the USB HDD into one of the USB ports on the back of the computer; since these are attached directly to the mainboard, they are less likely to be bad. The main thing you'll want to check to get your USB HDD to work is Device Manager.

Click Start, Control Panel, System, Hardware, and then Device Manager (or, hold down the Windows key and press the "Pause/Break" key, above Page Up... which will take you into System Properties, where you click Hardware and Device Manager). Check for any devices that have a yellow question mark by them; if they do, right-click the device, click "Update driver", and let it search for them automatically.

I occasionally have to do this for my new USB drives, and they end up working just fine after that. And, no, you don't have to format a USB HDD as NTFS or any of that other mess... it's not a hard drive in the traditional sense as it has no moving parts.

Answer 2

You say you restarted several times - if these were "soft" restarts, instead shutdown and power off the PC, then power back on. I've had fun and games with some devices which have behaved better after this kind of "hard" restart. Have you tried the HDD on a friend's machine?

Answer 3

It could be that there is no partition on the drive. If its new and you have no data on it, use a software such as partition magic to create a partition on it. if you are going to use it in windows, make sure you create an NTFS partition, after you do that, your computer will see it.
email if more help needed.

Answer 4

Try plugging into a different USB port....the one you are plugging into may be faulty.