Freecom external USB hard drive wont show up in Vista Explorer or

[Connie]

Freecom external USB hard drive wont show up in Vista x64 Explorer or in
Vista x64 Disk Managment at all, with latest uppdate !

I have two external USB hard drives from Freecom. One is a
Freecom classice external USB hard on 160GB.
The other is a Freecom external USB hard on 400GB

They both are decting,showing up and have worked fine in WinXP pro 32bit
with the latest windows update and has always done so from the start I
purchased they.

The hard disks are detecting in device manager as Samsung "SV1604N USB
DEVICE" and as "Samsung HD400LD USB DEVICE" and are using the same drivers
as named: disk.sys and partmgr.sys in Vista x64 and i winxp32 on same PC.

The two external USB hard drives also show up in device manager as two
different "USB Mass Storage Device" 's. and are also using the same driver
her:
USBSTOR.sys

To the problem:
In Vista x64 the "Freecom external USB hard on 400GB" are starting
up,detected and showing up with as a letter with no problem as in winXP, but
when I try to start the "Freecom classice external USB hard on 160GB" it fist
show up in device manager as USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE(USBSTOR.sys) before it
shuts down and without loading(showing up) the "SV1604N USB DEVICE"(disk.sys
and partmgr.sys) driver in device mmanager. Then first after some time it
tryes to start up again and then the "SV1604N USB DEVICE" driver are showing
up in device manager before the hard disk shuts down again. Now all drivers
as mentioned seem to have loaded and saying the following under all
(each)driver properties: "The device is workink properly".
But the thing is that the the "Freecom classice external USB hard on 160GB"
only shows up in device manager as drivers but not at all as any letter or
hard drive in Vista explorer or Vista Disk Managment. And the hard drive try
to start up before it shuts down again, again and again.

If I go under "SV1604N USB DEVICE"(disk.sys and partmgr.sys) USB device
properties and click on the "Policies" tab(flag) it hangs(freeze) for a while
before I can use other tabs there. The same when I hit populate under the
Volime tab.
And when using the PC some other functions and programs like IE hangs
sometimes.

To fix the hang(freece) problem I totally shut down the harddrive and the I
got up a message saying the following: "You need to format the disk in drive
H: before you can use it. Do you want to format it" ?

By testing the hard drive in WinXP x86 over and over again and on other PC's
I know it works and that it should work in Vista so whats the problem.?

I have unistalled the disk driver and reboted and also tried to disable
other devices in device manger and other possibillityes but with no luck.

One of the first thing I did was to call freecom but they just blamed on the
hardware and drivers from others. Then I found the "Freecom support forum"
here:
http://forum.freecompromo.com/viewforum.php?f=1

I there got very much suprised and stunned how many Freecom customer had the
same or simular problems as you can see without logging in to the forum and
there are almost no help and tottaly no working solution there.

My latest thought on this is that it must be some Vista driver problem cause
it has no harware problem on same machine with WinXP so I leave it up to you
people to find a solution.
There are also hundreds of the simular problems on internet with Vista.!!
Please help

Connie

 

[Connie]

[SOLVED]External USB hard drive wont detect in Vista but works in WinXP FIX


Believe me, it is VISTA permissions and NTFS that are much stricter than XP
was. To get vista to see XP drives you have to go through all kinds of
hassles that you won't understand, and should not need to if M$ had its act
in gear.

Solution
If your hard drive makes your system hangs in Vista try it on WinXP if not
working in vista:

Step 1.
With the drive attached, open a command prompt, type 'diskpart', then type
'list volume'. This should show any drive attached to the system.
Step 2.
Watch if your external drive(partition) is listed as a RAW format or a NTFS
format.
If your external drive(partition)ts listed as a NTFS partition format then
go(jump) to step 3.
If your external drive(partition)ts listed as a RAW partition format then
your hard drive partition table my be damaged physical or by virus. If not
sure. Try this:
Connect your hard drive to a winXP machine(PC) and try move all your files
over to another hard drive. Then format your demaged harddrive with the
format /q for quick in WinXP. Now test your hard drive in vista. If it works
move hard drive to Vista OS and take a new format without the /q (quik
format). It will take some time to format it. Now it should be fine and
detecting in vista. END

OBS: if your drive cant be detected in either WINXP or vista then try other
os or the program GetDataBack for NTFS. if not succed your drive my be
physical demaged and you may try to repair it with other recovery software.

Step 3.
Type:
select volume=(volume number).
Where your number is listed in the table.

assign letter=(volume letter)
Assign any letter that is not used by other hard drives or cd-rom/dvd

or try other ways to assign an letter to your hard drive in Disk managment.

You could also try a combination of these solutions.
END