External Hard Drive Not Working...

I recently bought an internal hard drive and an external enclosure. It is recognized by the computer and works perfectly, but other times the computer doesn't assign the hard drive a drive letter, and I am unable to use it.

At first I thought that it was the enclosure which was causing problems. However, I got a replacement for the enclosure and the same problem continues. I also tried a different hard drive with the enclosure which also worked. However, this hard drive's capacity was 160gb.

The hard drive shows up under device manager, but I am unable to use it.

Is there a problem with the enclosure or the hard drive?

 

What connection are you using? (USB, firewire, eSATA)

Also, is the drive securely connected via the AC adapter?

Oh, and by any chance is the internal hard drive a Western Digital (just wondering of course, )?

 

I'm using USB

drive is securely connected, and internal hard drive is Seagate

 

Well, i would probably blame the Harddrive before the enclosure - since you;ve tried two enclosures on the same drive, but other drives will work. Id say there is something wrong with the harddrive.

 

try attaching it and then safely removing it. if that doesn't work then you can try putting it in a desktop and see if it actually works. if you don't have the means to do that then assume something is wrong with the hard drive. i've had a maxtor 200gb hard drive with a Bytecc enclosure and it apparently needs to have a 20second warm up time and needs to be safely removed.