External Hard Drive Problem

[Andy]

Hi,

I am running windows xp. I am trying to get my computer to recognized
my external hard drive. I have not succesfully connected it yet. My
current drive configuration is as follows:

Primary Master: 40Gb Samsung Ultra
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: CD
Secondary Slave: DVD

I also have a SATA hard drive connected through a PCI card (no SATA
connections on motherboard). My external hard drive is a Maxtor 60Gb Ultra
ATA. When I connect it through USB 2.0, Windows will just bring up the
"Safely Remove Hardware" option in the tray. It will not let me look at the
hard drive and the Maxtor software does not find it either. My external
hard drive only works in Master Mode. Am I experiencing a Master/Slave
conflict? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Andy

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Hi,

I am running windows xp. I am trying to get my computer to recognized
my external hard drive. I have not succesfully connected it yet. My
current drive configuration is as follows:

Primary Master: 40Gb Samsung Ultra
Primary Slave: None
Secondary Master: CD
Secondary Slave: DVD

I also have a SATA hard drive connected through a PCI card (no SATA
connections on motherboard). My external hard drive is a Maxtor 60Gb Ultra
ATA. When I connect it through USB 2.0, Windows will just bring up the
"Safely Remove Hardware" option in the tray. It will not let me look at
the
hard drive and the Maxtor software does not find it either. My external
hard drive only works in Master Mode. Am I experiencing a Master/Slave
conflict? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Andy

1. The most basic question is does the device show during bootup, that is
it is listed on the screen during the boot process with the other drives?

2 If the answer to 1 is yes, then go to Control Panel/Admin
Tools/Computer Mngmnt/Disk Mngmnt. Is the drive shown here? If Yes, then
format the drive from this location. As it is an external drive I would
suggest you format as FAT32. After the drive is formatted then it will be
recognized.

3. If you are still having problem, what I would try is to use a WIN98SE
boot floppy disk and boot into dos. Run fdisk and see if the drive is
recognized here. If it isn't you have a hardware problem. If it is then
format the drive using fdisk then boot back into WINXP and with luck all
should be well.

 

[Rodger_B]

Do you have TweakUI installed (Microsoft PowerToys)?

If so, open TweakUI and go to My Computer>Drives and put a check opposite
the external drive.
Windows Explorer should then be able to see it.

 

[Fred S]

1. The most basic question is does the device show during bootup, that is
it is listed on the screen during the boot process with the other drives?

2 If the answer to 1 is yes, then go to Control Panel/Admin
Tools/Computer Mngmnt/Disk Mngmnt. Is the drive shown here? If Yes, then
format the drive from this location. As it is an external drive I would
suggest you format as FAT32. After the drive is formatted then it will be
recognized.

3. If you are still having problem, what I would try is to use a WIN98SE
boot floppy disk and boot into dos. Run fdisk and see if the drive is
recognized here. If it isn't you have a hardware problem. If it is then
format the drive using fdisk then boot back into WINXP and with luck all
should be well.

Ed,

Forgive the intrusion here but your item #3 suggests that the USB 2 HDD
will show in Fdisk - how can that happen in DOS?

I use the NTFS boot disk (which I understand is the only way to access a
USB device from DOS) and it uses a unique panasonic driver. This does
work as I've copied image files from a USB external to IDE HDD
partitions many times.

I just tried FDisk on one of my W98se machines and fdisk does NOT show
the external all. The external is formatted and used regularly with no
problems at all in Windows 98se, ME, and XP - and with the NTFS boot disk.

Please comment regarding the Fdisk item as I may be missing something.
Thanks, Fred

 

[Andy]

1. If I have the hard drive running during boot up, it will hang until I
turn it off and then it will continue with booting.

2. The hard drive does show up in Device Manager but not in Disk Management.

3. I will have to give fdisk a try. Thanks.

Andy

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Ed,

Forgive the intrusion here but your item #3 suggests that the USB 2 HDD
will show in Fdisk - how can that happen in DOS?

I use the NTFS boot disk (which I understand is the only way to access a
USB device from DOS) and it uses a unique panasonic driver. This does
work as I've copied image files from a USB external to IDE HDD
partitions many times.

I just tried FDisk on one of my W98se machines and fdisk does NOT show
the external all. The external is formatted and used regularly with no
problems at all in Windows 98se, ME, and XP - and with the NTFS boot disk.

Please comment regarding the Fdisk item as I may be missing something.
Thanks, Fred

You are quite right Fred. I always forget that on my WIN98SE boot
disk I have included 'duse', a DOS USB driver. To do as I suggest you
will need the DOS USB driver. Sorry about my oversight and thanks for
raising it.

In case you don't know 'duse' can be easily found by 'Googling'.