External Hard Drive w/ USB 2.0 not visible...

[Guest]

I have a Western Digital 120GB External USB Hard Drive which uses USB 2.0.

The drive was installed and recognized by Windows on a friend's computer
with the same feautres as mine. I have Windows XP w/ SP2. I had to reinstall
Windows, and the external drive was detected and showed up in My Computer. I
was experiencing driver problems, so I had to reinstall Windows XP yet again.
I reinstalled, but this time when I plug the USB in, everything is detected,
but nothing shows up in My Computer besides the hard drives I have connected
inside my tower.

Anyone have any ideas or know how I can access this drive? I have
information on it from before my reinstall of Windows that needs to be put
onto my new installation.

I read some other posts and attempted Uninstalling USB ports and such under
Device Manager...however, it seemed that each drive I uninstalled, my
wireless mouse and keyboards stopped responding, so I'd restart and Windows
would detect the USB stuff all over again...but when I'd connect the external
drive....still nothing. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Guest]

Go into Disk management, (right click My computer, manage, disk management)
Lower right of screen find the external drive, right click and assign new
drive letter and path. It is probably being assigned a letter that conflicts
with your cdrom or another external storage device.

 

[Guest]

I followed theinstructions given to me by Bob. The drive is detected and it
says it's online. It's listed as a basic drive, but to the right, instead of
it saying Healthy, it says Unallocated.

Also, when I right click to assign new drive letter and path, it's simply
not an option. It's an option for my other drive, but not for this.

Any further suggestions anyone?

-Mike

 

[Guest]

ADDING TO MY LAST POST...

the only available options when I right click on the unallocated space on
the drive under Computer Management are: New Partition...Properties... & Help.

I hope this doesn't mean that the data from the drive is lost!

-Mike

 

[Guest]

Plug the hard drive back into your friends computer and see if the data is
there. I'm thinking you disconnected the drive WITHOUT using the safely
remove hardware feature. Unplugging a mounted usb disk can cause loss of
partition info.

Always use the safely remove hardware feature Here is a link with pictures
in case you need assistance.

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/howto-07.html

If the data is gone it will need to be re-partioned and formated with a file
system.

 

[Guest]

Bob,

I think you're right. Before I read your last post, I plugged it back into
my friend's drive, and it was detected but didn't show up in his My Computer
folder. Then I read your post and now I fear the worst!

I did actually unplug the USB cord from my computer the other night because
it wasn't connecting properly...a stupid idea on my part I guess.

Does these mean the data is lost?! Or is there something I can possibly do
to fix this?

-Mike

 

[Guest]

I'm not real exprienced in data recovery when a partition has been removed.
You can "Google" for third party software and there are places you can send
the disk for recovery but is what is on the disk worth the cost of recovery.

Here some free recovery tools you can downlaod
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/collection/0,collid,1295,00.asp

Here are some companies.
http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm <--software
http://www.drivesavers.com/enterprise_solution/index.html

Good Luck!!


The word back up comes to mind..

 

[Guest]

Hiya

I've not used this tool yet, though may do when I know of a drive that gets
corrupted. Steve Gibson is a trusted security expert, and I'm sure some
others here will aknowledge him.

Anyway, this is what he's got:

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

If the free data recovery tools that Bob has listed don't work, you may have
to pay for one, especially if the data is really important.

Regards

eddie