External Hard Drive not being properly recognized - SOLVED

I own two laptops: an ASUS z70va and an HP Pavilion dv1000. For an external drive to use for back up, I purchased two years ago a HITACHI Travelstar 100GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive internal drive and enclosed it in a VANTEC NexStar3 NST-260U2-BK Aluminum 2.5" USB 2.0 External Enclosure

As both laptops run XP operating system, I did not need to download any drivers. So I am trying to remember the best I can what I did when I first got it and put it together.

I know I plugged it into the ASUS without any problem, the ASUS recognized it and I backed up all my files.

The HP laptop is really just a back-up laptop-- I don't use it for anything but checking e-mail, streaming and surfing. I just keep it by my bed at night. So I don't think I ever backed up any files from it onto my (now) external hard drive.

I just had to send my ASUS in for repairs (screen went bad), I backed up everything off of there with expectations that in the interim, I would use my HP.

Well the repairs are taking much longer than I expected and I want to access the external drive through my HP.

I plugged it in according to instructions but the hard drive is not properly recognized. It does not show up under Windows Explorer.

I called Hitachi tech support and they are trying to resolve this. The tech person had me right click onto My Computer and into Device Manager. The Hitachi drive is definitely recognized there. She then had me go into Computer management (Local) and then to Disk management. There the device is sort of recognized. There is nothing under Volume, under Layout it says partition, Type - Basic, File System - NTFS, Status - Healthy (Unknown Partition), Capacity - 1GB (this is a 100GB drive) Free Space 127 MB.

In the tech's research, she found that MS says (Unknown Partition) is a bug -- that Restore IT (a 3rd party software) has been written on the external drive (I presume in that 1 GB partition). They know no solution except to reformat the external drive.

As this is my only copy as of this moment of all my files -- as the ASUS hard Drive had to be reformatted because of some file of Windows OS got corrupted just before I sent it in-- and the ASUS itself is in the shop - I don't know for how long - I am a little freaked. This is 10 years of work on this drive.

Also I have no idea how a 3rd party program such as Restore It got on here. I don't recall it coming with the ASUS and I certainly didn't install it. The ASUS came pretty stripped clean -- most of its drivers were not even installed and I had to install them myself.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I am more than a little freaked out.

 

Just a question, if your hp is an older machine, it most likely has usb 1.1
I believe Usb 1.1 can only source 300mah of current, where usb 2.0 can source 500mah.
Did you plug in the 5v power adaptor into your vantec external drive, and the usb cable?
If you only plugged in the Usb, than that is your problem. The drive simply is not getting enough power to start.
Plug in the 5v external power source if you hav not already, and get back to us on if it works.
I would not go playing with 3rd party software with 10 years of files.
I recommend going to a friends house or something like that and ask them if you can check to see if your external drive works with their computer. I am sure someone you know will be able to help you.
I hope you get your asus back soon,

K-TRON

 

I wondered about the drive not getting enough power. But I did not know about the differences re: USB 1.0 and USB 2.0 and power. Thanks for that info.

However the problem is solved!!!!

After reading the same support pages on the MS that the Hitachi tech read -- I began to suspect that the "unknown partition" it was referring to was one on the internal drive, not the external drive (though perhaps the analysis would be the same.)

SO I tried to see if HP had any troubleshooting mechanisms -- which it did though I ran into a dead-end. The device manager clearly recognized the drive but it wasn't coming up on anything else. Also -- though I know almost nothing about this-- I wondered if I could not get access to the external drive through the DOS prompt.

Anyway -- I decided to call HP's tech support (I don't know why I hadn't thought of at least trying that before -- but I think I was burnt out after spending a whole weekend with HP's tech support for a friend's laptop and getting nowhere.)

Anyway -- when I finally got through to HP's tech support -- she fixed the problem in 30 seconds.

First she had me unplug everything including AC adaptor -- shut down the computer and remove the battery. Then she had me press on the power button for 1 minute. This was, she said, to get rid of any static electricity that might be in the computer.

Then she had me turn on the computer go to the bios configuration and set it to default.

Then she had me shut down and then turn on the computer. Then plug in the external hard-drive and ***presto, whamo*** the external hard drive was recognized instantly.

Man -- I never want to go through that again.... I now know I should keep "TWO" back up hard drives not just one. Of course for just my files, a 32 gig flash drive will do it.

But I never had such a scare in my life......