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| Thread ID: 118260 | 2011-05-26 12:09:00 | External USB Hard Drives | curly (6655) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1204995 | 2011-05-27 12:51:00 | If they dont appear in device manager, there's no way youre going to format them. If you cant see them. See if Legacy USB is enabled in the BIOS / or see if they appear in the BIOS. if they dont, they wont appear in windows Or connect them to SATA ports if theyre SATA. See if theyre working at all As they are HDDs enclosed in a USB enclosure, could I take them out, and connect them directly up to the motherboard and then format them? If then they are still not seen in device manager, perhaps the drives themselves are faulty. They are WD 250 gig and not that old. |
curly (6655) | ||
| 1204996 | 2011-05-27 16:32:00 | Could just be a power issue of some kind as b.... suggested. Dodgy cable, plug or something. Sometimes some USB ports can't supply enough power either, and then the thing doesn't work. Bus-powered USB hard drives are quite demanding in terms of power requirements |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1204997 | 2011-06-04 00:23:00 | Took it out and plugged into another computer - same result, doesen't go! Went into Computer managemant/ disk management and it shows that the disk concerned (Shown as disk 5) is both unknown and not initialised. Its a WD 2500JB and has no jumpers attached. Which makes it either a master or slave. But how do I either initialise it or better still, format it ? I have tried but was unsucessful. I don't know if there is anything on the disk. but now don't care :-) |
curly (6655) | ||
| 1204998 | 2011-06-04 00:33:00 | In disk management, right-click on the drive (the left hand side, not the part which shows partitions etc) and choose "initialize disk" Then, you can add partitions and format them. If you want to know what's on the disk, I suggest scanning it with a program like FileScavenger first. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1204999 | 2011-06-04 01:17:00 | [QUOTE=Agent_24;1022459]In disk management, right-click on the drive (the left hand side, not the part which shows partitions etc) and choose "initialize disk" Yeah I did that, another screen pops up headed "Initialise Disk", the detail shows disk 5 and then suggests I use MBR as the partition style. The MBR option is already ticked, so I click OK. This results in another popup headed "Logical Disk Manager" and the detail says The device is not ready, folowed by OK. How do I make the drive "ready"? Meantime I will try FileScavenger. Thanks for help. |
curly (6655) | ||
| 1205000 | 2011-06-04 01:26:00 | Device not ready error is strange, sounds like a configuration or hardware problem possibly... Are they IDE or SATA? |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1205001 | 2011-06-04 06:28:00 | Device not ready error is strange, sounds like a configuration or hardware problem possibly... Are they IDE or SATA? IDE. Its a Western Digital drive inside a USB enclosure. One thought, the HDD may be unused and never formatted. My computer is a SATA and wonder if they make a cable to connect the IDE drive to the SATA based computer. That may solve the problem, as I could format the drive. |
curly (6655) | ||
| 1205002 | 2011-06-04 06:40:00 | What's your motherboard make and model? I have seen this sort of thing before on a hard drive that was pulled from a game machine. |
Snorkbox (15764) | ||
| 1205003 | 2011-06-04 06:44:00 | IDE. Its a Western Digital drive inside a USB enclosure. One thought, the HDD may be unused and never formatted. My computer is a SATA and wonder if they make a cable to connect the IDE drive to the SATA based computer. That may solve the problem, as I could format the drive. Ah I think I confused myself when I read "Took it out and plugged into another computer" - thinking you had removed it from the USB enclosure and plugged it into the PC directly. That actually may be what you need to do, it sounds like it could be a problem with the USB enclosure, not the drive itself. Even if the drive has never been formatted, the procedure you followed for initializing the disk should work without the error you received. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1205004 | 2011-06-04 08:27:00 | Ah I think I confused myself when I read "Took it out and plugged into another computer" - thinking you had removed it from the USB enclosure and plugged it into the PC directly. That actually may be what you need to do, it sounds like it could be a problem with the USB enclosure, not the drive itself. Even if the drive has never been formatted, the procedure you followed for initializing the disk should work without the error you received. Quite happy to format/reformat it, but is there such a cable thingy that will connect an IDE drive to a SATA only computer ? Will go into Whangarei after the weekend and make some enquiries. Thanks. |
curly (6655) | ||
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