hi everyone,

i really need your help. i have an external harddrive, and i believe it is a western digital (i don't know how to check its model since it is closed in a case) 250GB hard drive. i have windows vista ultimate 32-bit edition with all of the latest updates installed.

the hard drive simply is not recognized anywhere. i have plugged it into all of the USB ports (sometimes while having all of my other USB equipment unplugged) on my computer, and neither one will have it be recognized. the green light is on, so the power is working, but disk management, device manager, and my computer do not have the device listed at all, whether working or not working.

please, i have tried to figure this out on my own for days now and nothing is working. i have extremely important files on there. i need to get it working.

thanks in advance,

sebastian

Hi brigada37

Couple of things to try below:

Windows Vista Magazine | Windows Vista does not recognise my USB flash drive.


Try disabling user account control, it's a long shot but so many things in Vista won't run while it's switched on.

Hi sebastian

Have you tried looking for it in the bios? Perhaps there are changes you need to make in order for it to be seen?

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AMD X2 6400+ 3.2GHz BLACK EDITION::SCYTHE SAMURAI COOLER::GA-M51 M/B::3GB DDR2 6400RAM::GEFORCE 8800GTS320/625/900MHz DRIVER '174.74' BETA::160 RAID 0 SATA2::SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY/'DANIELS' DRIVERS::LITE-ON DVD RW/PIONEER DVD::HIPER 530W MODULAR::THERMALTAKE ARMOUR Jr CASE::RAZER COPPERHEAD MOUSE::VISTA HOME PREMIUM SP1

hi guys, thanks to for the replies.

for user account control, i've had it disabled ever since i installed vista, i found it very annoying. i did try enabling it to get the external hd to work but nothing.

as for the BIOS options, i did some things, such as set removable device to top boot priority but other than that, i don't know what i could do. i'm very familiar with the BIOS as i've done a lot of overclocking so if you guys know of any options to make an external hard drive work, that would be great.

btw, do you think that a miscrosoft service might be causing this? maybe there is a specific service (in the services.msc menu) that controls USB external hard drives.

sebastian

Hi Sebastian,
have you used this drive before? If not make sure the jumper settings are correct.. Also did it come with a driver disk? Finally, can you see it under Device manager? If it's no then maybe the drive might be faulty??..

__________________
AMD X2 6400+ 3.2GHz BLACK EDITION::SCYTHE SAMURAI COOLER::GA-M51 M/B::3GB DDR2 6400RAM::GEFORCE 8800GTS320/625/900MHz DRIVER '174.74' BETA::160 RAID 0 SATA2::SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY/'DANIELS' DRIVERS::LITE-ON DVD RW/PIONEER DVD::HIPER 530W MODULAR::THERMALTAKE ARMOUR Jr CASE::RAZER COPPERHEAD MOUSE::VISTA HOME PREMIUM SP1

hey everyone,

thanks a lot for all of your replies. i think i'm going to take the easy way out (well maybe easy, but definitely long) and install windows xp back onto my computer. i have been playing around with vista for about 4 days now and even though it is a step in the right direction with the SP1 update (i had vista before when it came out - terrible), the OS is not completely ready, in my opinion.

but, like i already said (since this is a vista forum - i don't want to anger anyone), the OS is MUCH better with the SP1 update so i will wait a little longer for more critical updates before i install it again.

thank you all for your time,

sebastian