How do I configure an external USB 2.0 HDD?

[Peter Ledden]

I have bought a WD 120gb HDD and a USB 2.0 self powered external housing. I
have set the jumpers at 'Master', and it shows up in Device Manager as
'Unknown Device'. When I connect the USB cable it tells me 'USB Device not
recognised'

My A drive is a floppy, my B an LS 240, C as normal NTFS, D a second HDD
NTFS used for backup, E is a CD-RW, F and G are my USB card reader. I cannot
get WinXP to recognise the external drive, Plug & Play is enabled.

I have WinXP Home with all updates and plenty of RAM. Firstly, how do I get
it to display correctly in Device Manager? Then how do I FDISK and FORMAT
this drive? I have the drive plugged into a USB 2.0 Hub which is plugged
into a USB 2.0 card in my machine.

One more thing, it much prefers to be plugged directly into the computer
rather than the hub, I get nothing at all if plugged into the hub.

 

[Rich Barry]

Peter, did you install the WinXP USB Drivers for the PCI Card? Check your
Installation Guide from WD or go to
their website.

 

[LVTravel]

You also may have to install the drivers for the USB hub. Commonly on a CD
or floppy included with the hub.

 

[Robert]

I have bought a WD 120gb HDD and a USB 2.0 self powered external
housing. I have set the jumpers at 'Master', and it shows up in
Device Manager as 'Unknown Device'. When I connect the USB cable it
tells me 'USB Device not recognised'

My A drive is a floppy, my B an LS 240, C as normal NTFS, D a second
HDD NTFS used for backup, E is a CD-RW, F and G are my USB card
reader. I cannot get WinXP to recognise the external drive, Plug &
Play is enabled.

I have WinXP Home with all updates and plenty of RAM. Firstly, how do
I get it to display correctly in Device Manager? Then how do I FDISK
and FORMAT this drive? I have the drive plugged into a USB 2.0 Hub
which is plugged into a USB 2.0 card in my machine.

One more thing, it much prefers to be plugged directly into the
computer rather than the hub, I get nothing at all if plugged into
the hub.

_______________
Hi, Peter,
I don't know if this is going to be of any help but you might want to
try it. I had the same kind of trouble with a HDD and a FireWire self
powered external housing. The HDD was not recognized by XP Home when
inside the external unit. I realized that it might need to be formatted
beforehand. So I took the HDD out of its housing, set the jumpers to
'slave', and plugged it in as a normal 'slave' HDD inside the main
unit. It got recognized by XP and I was able to format it using the XP
Administrative Tools.
Finally, I took that HDD off the main unit, set the jumpers back to
'master', reinserted it into its external housing, and plugged the
whole thing in using the FireWire connection (USB in your case).
It is now perfectly recognized by XP Home as an external HDD.
But formatting could not be done when the HDD was 'external'.
The HDD had to be detected as 'internal'.