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    New to Windows, cant access external hard drives in Windows 7

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by adrianbk, Aug 27, 2011.

  1. adrianbk

    adrianbk Notebook Geek

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    When I plug them in via USB the notebook (Lotus P151HM1) makes the little chime, installs the drivers, says its ready to use, and then nothing, the device doesn't show up anywhere except for in devices and printers where it says everything is installed and working correctly and that I should be able to use it. What gives? Anyone have any advice?

    EDIT: Additional information, it shows up in disk management as an unnamed drive, however I cant assign it a drive letter, the option to change drive letter is greyed out.
     
    adrianbk, Aug 27, 2011
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  2. reb1

    reb1 Notebook Evangelist

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    So when you click on start/computer it is also not showing.
     
    reb1, Aug 27, 2011
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  3. jnjroach

    jnjroach Notebook Evangelist

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    How are the external disks formattted? Are these 3.5 or 2.5" Disks? Do they have external power supplies? If no, your USB Port may not provide the needed power, some drives come with cables that need 2 USB ports, one for power and the other data.

    If you open up Computer Management (Right Click on Computer from the Start menu and click Manage), and click on Disk Management, are the external disk listed, if so are they showing offline? If they are right click the disk and click intialize or bring online...

    HTH,
     
    jnjroach, Aug 27, 2011
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  4. adrianbk

    adrianbk Notebook Geek

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    It shows up in Disk management as a Healthy Active Partition, but is unnamed. It has an external powersupply and is a 500GB Western Digital HDD. And it is not showing up in start/computer. The only way to see it is in devices/printers or in Disk management.
     
    adrianbk, Aug 27, 2011
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  5. chimpanzee

    chimpanzee Notebook Virtuoso

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    Have you formatted the disk in disk management ? Or it may have been taken offline. I experienced this before when I clone an old HDD to a new one. Windows 7 would take the old disk offline when plugged in as it shares the same GUID with my current newer disk(due to the clone). In this case, I have to manually put it online.

    Not sure about your case, these are the two most probable causes. If you can see it in disk manager, it is ok.
     
    chimpanzee, Aug 27, 2011
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  6. Full-English

    Full-English Notebook Deity

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    Has it been formatted, if so, what file system is it formatted in?
     
    Full-English, Aug 27, 2011
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  7. booboo12

    booboo12 Notebook Prophet

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    This, if it's in say EXT4 or Mac OS formatted, Windows won't be able to "see" the drive and let you click it in Computer.
     
    booboo12, Aug 27, 2011
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  8. jnjroach

    jnjroach Notebook Evangelist

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    It does sound like it is formatted in a file system that Windows doesn't recognize....
     
    jnjroach, Aug 27, 2011
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  9. V_Chip

    V_Chip Be about it.

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    'Tis what I was thinking.

    I always format and partition new hdds (initially) using the Diskpart utility.
     
    V_Chip, Aug 27, 2011
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  10. anseio

    anseio All ways are my ways.

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    If the drive has data on it that you need, then you can't risk a reformat yet.

    Make a bootable cd of Parted Magic. It's a linux based rescue type OS and it's able to read many drive formats. You'll be able to use to to drag the files from your external drive (mac) onto your Windows formatted drive. You can then boot back into Windows and format the external drive correctly and things should work out well.
     
    anseio, Aug 27, 2011
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