USB portable hard drive

[Guest]

I connected a portable external 40 gig hard drive to my dell laptop with
windows XP. The computer does not recognise the drive. I have deleted and
added the drivers, re installed XP, followed the trouble shooting guide
provided by segate, all to no avail. Can anyone help?

 

[Mistoffolees]

I connected a portable external 40 gig hard drive to my dell laptop with
windows XP. The computer does not recognise the drive. I have deleted and
added the drivers, re installed XP, followed the trouble shooting guide
provided by segate, all to no avail. Can anyone help?

Two things to check. First, the external hard drive must run
off its own power supply; there is not enough power to drive
it from the Dell's USB port. Second, in disk management, is
the external drive seen? If seen but not given a drive letter,
then has the external drive been formatted? If the drive is not
seen, then test the external HD, using another computer, either
desktop or another laptop.

 

[Guest]

The drive was not seen, I tested it on another conputer with windows ME and
it worked fine.

 

[Dave P]

Did you ever find a solution?

Appears USB problems are not a strong area of this NG,

or Microsoft.


Dave P

 

[Guest]

There are two USB connectors on the hard drive, one for transmission and one
for power, you must connect them in the proper sequence, power first then
transmission, everything works fine now. This is on my laptop only, the
drive works fine on the desktop with only the transmission connector.