I have an external hard drive through a usb cable but I cannot access it?

Question

the computer keeps asking me to insert a disk in drive F:

Answer 1

Did you install the drivers for the hard drive? Go to the website of the manufacturer of that HDD and just download the drivers.

Answer 2

Did your computer detected your harddrive(the one with connected via USB)? if it did try following these steps:

1. Right Click "My Computer" and select "Manage".
2. A window will appear "Computer Management"
3. From there select "Disk Management" you will find all of the Hard Disks and CD/DVD-ROM Drive that is connected to your computer.
4. Check if your there are two Hard Disk or CD/DVD-ROM Drives that has the same drive letters if there is, try to change the other one. So that it will be detected.
5. That is if your OS is Windows 2000 or XP.

What do you mean by cannot be accessed anyway?
email me @ [e-mail]

Answer 3

Hi,

I presume you are using windows xp / windows 2000 and above.
If it is in a 3.5 or 5.25 case then open it up and check if the bus is connected properly to the hard drive. If it is a simple external hard drive, then try to swich on the USB hard disk after the computer is on. If it still doesnt work, then I believe there must be some manufacturing defect in it.

Regards / Zubair

Answer 4

If you have XP usually this problem doesn't arise. When it does you'll have a good time. :-).

The driver that makes MOST External USB HDDs work is the USB Mass Storage Driver (usbstor.sys)
Goto \drivers\ and see if you have this file or not. Most probably you won't (that's why the comp asks for the disk containing this driver) find it. If you don't find it then just get it from net and install it.

Answer 5

If you are using windows XP, is the external drive a USB2 only or can if so have you installed a minimum of service pack 2 which will allow you to install the USB2 drivers for the motherboard. Lots of oldish motherboards require Windows service pack2 to before you can install USB2 drivers to be installed.

And:

If you have any other USB devices installed unplug them before you boot up. Only have the external Hard Drive plugged in.

Answer 6

1. Click Start, and click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
2. Click System, and then click the Hardware tab.
3. Click the Device Manager button.
4. Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
5. Right-click every device under the Universal Serial Bus controllers node, and then click Uninstall to remove them one at a time.
6. Restart the computer, and then reinstall the USB controllers.
7. Plug in the removable USB storage device, and then test to make sure that the issue is resolved.

Answer 7

1) You might be checking the wrong drive
2) If at all it does not show up as "Removable drive", you can try connecting that to another usb port
3) or connect the other wire at the same end. This could be because of the different usb standards

Answer 8

well :according to your "USB 2.0 ports the monitor's tower has 4
were 2 in front and addition 2 back because F drive wants an wireless router card adapter refer to http://www.diskwizzard.information.com or http://www.hp.com/support only !