My laptop dosnt find my external hard drive?

Question

I have just bought my second external hard drive but its not appearing under "my computer" but when looking in device manager it seems to be there? Never had trouble with my first drive it finds it straight away.Both drives are Samsung but it can only find the smaller capacity one 80G the other is 100 something.

Thanks in advance :)

no locks on it as my the drive similar to this found it just fine.

Usb port all good ... as above it found my other drive of similar specs just fine.

Tried refresh a few times , no good

thanks anyways

when i say i have "2" ...im not running both external hard drives at the same time . Before i got the new external drive it would run the internal and my old external just fine.

Hard to format a drive you cant see :(

thanks for the reply...

dont think its confusing the hardware because i can put usb stick / ipod and seems to pick them up without problems...

i just tried connecting it another pc at home... hardware detects the drive but again cant find it in "My computer"

i didn't want to install the both of them at the same time in case there is conflict between the drives and or power issues... but i guess i can give it a go

gota go work will let you know how i go

cheers

Answer 1

If the laptop or computer you have is older...the USB port may not be 2.0.
Also, maybe try right clicking in the my computer and click refresh.

Ohh and one last thing, maybe the drive itself has like a lock switch on it?

Hope one of these helps!

EDIT:
Thanks for the update...what im guessing is it is only recognizing one of them because without the proper software installed(dunno if you installed it from the disk or just plugged it in). Im betting if you cut off your computer and turned it back on...plugged in the new one first, it would recognize that one and then not recognize the old one. Have you tried plugging in the new one while the old one was plugged in? That way your machine doesnt think its the same one.

Answer 2

Ok try this: (this is if you have XP) Go to Start, on the right click on Control Panel, click on Printers and Other Hardware and there should be a thing on the left side that says Add Hardware Under "See Also".
:)

Answer 3

if your using both drives at the same time no wonder, your computer as not got the power to run two external hard drives, you will have to have a separate power unit for the second drive, if you want to use both at the same time, plus you may need to format the drive for it to see it,