External Hard Drive Not Being Recognised

[mooze21]

Hi All!

Hoping someone can help me with a problem. I recently bought a new Seagate 1.5TB hard-drive and a StoreJet Ultra35 hdd case and everything was working fine until a couple of weeks ago when I plugged it in, Windows couldn't find it! Nothing shows up in My Computer or Disk Management, yet it shows up in the Device Manager and says it's working properly. Reformatting the drive is unfortunately not an option as I have data on there that cannot be replaced.

Can anyone give me any ideas why Windows suddenly won't recognise the drive?

Thank-you!!! :wave:

[Fabian]

To resolve your query follow the steps. Open Device Manager and look for the Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Then uninstall the USB controllers, USB Composite Device and USB Root Hub. Restart your system and windows detect the new device. Update the driver. Also see the below threads for more information.
External hard drive not recognized by Windows Vista
External hard drive not recognized in computer management
http://forums.techarena.in/mediacenter/1096340.htm

[mooze21]

Thanks for your suggestions! Unfortunately everything suggested in the links, I have tried already.

The things I have tried are:
- uninstalling and reinstalling the device
- uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers
- rolling back the drivers (didn't have anything to roll back)
- disabling the 1394 LAN connection (someone suggested this, not sure what this was actually supposed to achieve but it didn't work)
- changing USB ports
- checking the physical connections inside the hard-drive case (all fine)

It does do one strange thing though. When I connect the hard drive, it will make a single beep every 4-5 seconds for a good couple of minutes. The beeping will then stop and Windows will make the usual Windows device connection double ding. The power light is on solid as usual throughout this.

Any thoughts?

[Maxforu]

I think you can try to connect your drive by using a different USB cable. Also you need to unplug your drive from the power outlet for a few seconds and then try to connect it again.

[Majestic_Lizard]

I have noticed a few things when trying to get computers to consistently recognize external drives through USB.

1) VERY IMPORTANT: Do not have the external hard disk's AC adapter plugged into a wall socket. Have it connected to a battery back-up (UPS) that conditions the power precisely. Having it connected to a wall socket is going to cause the computer to fail to write to the disk intermittently. Have it plugged into the battery back-up part of the UPS, not the surge protection only part.

2) Do not plug the drive up to the front USB ports. Use the back ones. The front USB ports are not directly connected to the chipset and their power is not as consistent or stable. That doesn't mean it won't work, it just means the front ports are not as safe.

3) Make sure that in your hardware device manager (under USB serial controllers) the tick mark for "allow windows to turn off this USB device to save power" is not checked for ANY of those devices. Sometimes windows will decide to turn off a USB device at an inopportune time to save power.

4) Make sure that windows is not trying to assign the same letter to both the external USB hard disk and one of your internal hard disk partitions.

5) Make sure that your cat or dog has not chewed on the USB cable. Make sure that both heads of the USB cable do not have any rust or corrosion.

Those are the rules I have learned to follow to avoid having problems with external USB hard disks not being recognized. Feel free to ignore them now and tell me I have no idea what I am talking about. LOL.