External Hard drive

[Jayne]

Hi, I have a hard drive which i took out of an old computer and which has
lots of data on it, i bought an external hard drive case and when i connect
it to my computers, i have two one vista and one xp it tells me in computer
management that it is unallocated, does this mean that i have lost all my
data on the hard drive, also it shows up in device manager but not on my
computer on the vista computer , and its the same on the xp computer, the
blue led light on the external hard drive case stays blue for about 10
seconds then goes off, any help would be appreciated thanks, the hard drive
is a seagate barracuda 7200.7 ,160 Gbytes, and the case is from ads
technologies usbx-834 not sure if this will help, thanks jayne

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Have you checked in Drive Manager (right click on Computer, choose Manage,
choose Disk Management) to see if there is an unallocated drive to which you
can assign a drive letter?

 

[Jayne]

my external hard drive is showing up but says its unallocated and when i
right click it does not come up with change drive letter all that is
highlighted is new simple volume, but i dont want to format the drive as it
has all my data on it. As it says unallocated does this mean i have lost all
my data on the external hard drive

 

[Jayne]

i have assigned a drive letter but when i click on open or explore it tells
me that the drive is not formatted and do i want to format now, if i format
will i lose all my data on the drive. It says basic, online Healthy
(Active) and when i click on properties it tells me i have no free space that
the disk is full, but at the top of the screen where it shows your hard
drives it tell me i have 100% free.
--
Jayne

my external hard drive is showing up but says its unallocated and when i
right click it does not come up with change drive letter all that is
highlighted is new simple volume, but i dont want to format the drive as it
has all my data on it. As it says unallocated does this mean i have lost all
my data on the external hard drive

 

[AlexB]

You should have mentioned he fact that it is a USB external HDD. This could
be your problem, not HDD. the USB ports are very capricious and such
problems are a commonplace.

You have the following options: (1) disconnect all USB appliances with the
exception mouse and keyboard and see if the HDD will become visible and
accessible. Left alone as he sole current consumer the motherboard may
accept it.

You can try to switch the HDD from the chip's USB controllers (on DELL
GX-280 <an old machine> and other types there should be 5 of those) to the
ones hooked up to a PCI. If you have a firewire PCI chip and do not use it,
rip it off and replace it with Belkin's 5-port USB PCI card which I did just
today on one of my machines. It seems like a miracle after so many months of
phantom USB devices appearing and disappearing like in a horror movie.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Help appears to be on the way for a lot of these usb issues. Vista SP1 (now
in RC and only a few weeks away from release) includes a rollup of usb
hotfixes that have been available only on demand from MS PSS up until now.
Anyone can try SP1 RC since it is in public testing, but I would wait for
release and just use the rollup for now.

The usb rollup presently available from MS PSS is at:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=941600

For an online tool and download that may also help, see:
http://www.infdump.com/download-inf-files_new.php/inffiles/U/USBSTOR.INF/5.1.2600.0/download.html

 

[AlexB]

That Belkin's USB 5-Port CPI has been a miracle. The only thing I kind of
puzzled about is the purpose of the 5th, internal USB port. Only 4 ports are
exposed to the outside world, the 5th one is facing the guts of the
computer.

Anyone has any idea how it can be used profitably? I do not want to hook
anything up externally to it since it will one day result in a disaster.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

USB is a bus, not just the ports. There is nothing to prevent using a
device which is on the usb bus but does not need external connections.

That Belkin's USB 5-Port CPI has been a miracle. The only thing I kind of
puzzled about is the purpose of the 5th, internal USB port. Only 4 ports
are exposed to the outside world, the 5th one is facing the guts of the
computer.

Anyone has any idea how it can be used profitably? I do not want to hook
anything up externally to it since it will one day result in a disaster.

 

[Patrick]

can use a it to give you USB to the front of the system using a adapter
plate in one of the drive external bays

That Belkin's USB 5-Port CPI has been a miracle. The only thing I kind of
puzzled about is the purpose of the 5th, internal USB port. Only 4 ports
are exposed to the outside world, the 5th one is facing the guts of the
computer.

Anyone has any idea how it can be used profitably? I do not want to hook
anything up externally to it since it will one day result in a disaster.

 

[RalfG]

Check that the harddrive you put in the external case is jumpered as Master,
not CS (cable select) or Slave.