Unable to connect USB HDD (Hitachi 120Gb) Using Vista

[Ray]

Hi I hope someone can help me out here. Still cannot solve the above problem
after checking all the solution and etc. Device manager says its working ok,
driver don't need updating, Hitachi site says Vista support and etc.

I can see the HDD under Disk Management too but I cannot access the HDD
content but able to see the drive letter assignment in window explorer.

i am totally lost. Can some good samaritan help me out here. It is
definately Vista problem cause I have try using my desktop XP and my office
computer, it all works fine. Nothing wrong with the external HDD whatsoever.

Try updating with MS Vista patches using windows update and etc but still
cannot solve.

Btw, this is a new notebook I just bought. Its a Dell XPS 1530 with Bista
Home Premium.

Many thanx in advance.

Ray

 

[Ray]

Sorry for being not clear but my USB Hitachi HDD is not new and I have a lot
of content inside which is important to me. Therefore formatting it is out of
the question. I try to study the problem further last night. It seem that my
anti-virus scanner Macfee is able to scan it. The whole HDD are able to be
read by the AV but in my windows explorer I can only just see the drive
letter F (Access Denied):

I think there is some kind of user protection or access protection setting
which come default with the Vista ? Whenever an external HDD is plug into the
usb, its automatically lock. I need to know where and why ? If I stuck my
thumbdrive (Kingston 1Gb) into the same usb port, I am able to open it. No
problem. Just USB HDD.

Pls help.

Ray

 

[Gene_fitz]

I would try, in disk management, to format the external drive.

Many times, new hard drives come unformatted. Format and see if it shows up
correctly.

 

[Bucky2]

Hi I hope someone can help me out here. Still cannot solve the above problem
after checking all the solution and etc. Device manager says its working ok,
driver don't need updating,Hitachisite saysVistasupport and etc.
I can see the HDD under Disk Management too but I cannot access the HDD
content but able to see the drive letter assignment in window explorer.

I don't know if you have the same problem as me. But I had a Hitachi
laptop drive that I put inside an enclosure to read from another
machine. It also recognized the USB mass storage device and installed
all the drivers correctly, and showed up under Disk Manager, but it
said it was unreadable. After hours of trying different things, I
finally realized that I had a hard disk password on the drive. So I
had to put it back in the laptop, remove the hard disk password, then
it worked great.

So check if it has any passwords or encryption on the drive.