new Sony VPCZ1 compatibility issue with external HDD

Hi,

I just received my new Sony Vaio VPC-Z11X9E/B, on which I did a clean install of Windows 7 Professionl 64 bits that went almost perfectly. I then tried to copy my back-up data from an Western Digital My Passport Elite external HDD but the Vaio / Windows couldn't recognize it. I tried all the USB ports. The HDD seems to load and spin, the LEDs are lit but Windows can't see it, not even in the Disk Managament utility.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

Does it work on another machine? Is it powered from USB?

 

I had that happen to me with a Transcend ToughHDD. Only to find out the HDD header went corrupt from the previous Vista installation. Recovered all my data minus 11GB lost.

Vista and W7 don't seem to like it when you just unplug the USB (when it is NOT active). Whenever they do complain, they usually mess something up (happended to me with a flash drive as well) - XP didn't complain, nor corrupt anything. Hopefully your HDD is running on another machine...

But when you say Disk Management can't see it, that possibly maybe a driver issue with your Z11. Did you install ALL drivers from the Sony support page? Are there any ? marks in Device Manager? Don't skimp out on drivers just because you want to install less. It will save you alot of misery later on...

 

Contact Western Digital. The newer Passport drives aren't "pure" HDs anymore, but have their own special layout format and USB driver install, mostly to circumvent that Microsoft has disabled auto-play for removable drives.
And early versions don't work with Windows 7 -- they need an update of the drivers for the drive to be recognized correctly.

My long-term recommendation is to avoid buying proprietary solutions. A plain external drive that works with ALL operating systems may give you less "features", but you can trust it to work, whether you plug it into Windows 9 or Linux.