External hard drive problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dr. Indera
  • Start date Start date
D

Dr. Indera

hello,

i purchased an western digital usb external hard drive about a month ago,
the first few times i plugged it into my laptop, it was recognized. i tried
last week and it didn't recognize it. i tried it again and still no luck.
normally, it will show up as drive E. now it just shows up as "mass storage
device", without a drive letter, so i can't create a backup file on it.

any advise would be greatly appreciated.

thank you
indera
 
Go to Win2K "Help" find "Disk Management", open "Disk Management" and
assign drive letter "E" if it is not shown for the "mass storage device"

Willard
 
hi willard,

i went into disk management, but did not see an option for mass storage
device.
i was under the impression that my usb drive would be plug and play.

thanks
indera
 
hi jr,

thank you. i tried the link you sent, but it didn't help. i finally had to
break down and call the usb hard drive vendor. it worked that day, but i
haven't tried to see if it will work consistently <smile>

indera
 
Hi, I didn't see the earlier posts in this thread so please excuse me
if this point has already been mentioned. I have an external USB drive
which is powered through the USB cable. This will not work reliably,
particularly on older machines. I believe that this is a power drain
problem. The suppliers of the device provided a PS2 connector which
presumably also provides some power. Unfortunately newer machines do
not have a PS2 port!

I don't know if this relates to your problem, but I'm posting just in
case it does. If it does apply, you could try a powered USB hub
between your machine and the drive.

Cheers,

Cliff
 
hi cliff,

i plan to do another backup tomorrow. if it doesn't work like it did before,
i will look into what you suggested.

thank you
indera
 
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