External not picking up

T

tco21

Cynical Grinch
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I have an external HDD that works fine but the moment I try using it on my laptop it doesn't pick up.

The laptop is an HP Compaq nx7300 running Windows Vista Business.
 
I had the same problem with Vista, I have a Seagate Freeagent 500GB external HDD. It says its vista compatible, and doesnt need drivers but that is a lie. I couldnt get it to work after 2 weeks, so i formatted and went back to XP x64 Pro.
 
Have you checked if it is listed is Disk Management (in Computer Management) ? If it is listed there, you can just assign it a drive letter, which should then appear in My Computer.

To get to Disk Management:
- Right click My Computer
- Select Manage
- Under Storage go to Disk Management

Hope this helps.
 
NetSpike said:
Have you checked if it is listed is Disk Management (in Computer Management) ? If it is listed there, you can just assign it a drive letter, which should then appear in My Computer.

To get to Disk Management:
- Right click My Computer
- Select Manage
- Under Storage go to Disk Management

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Could be that, or this :

When I plugged my HDD into my friends Vista, it also didn't pick it up. Went into disk management and it seemed to pick it up as a dynamic disk (didn't read) - and only when I converted to basic, did it pick up :/

Bear in mind, conversion loses all data
 
Dolby said:
Could be that, or this :

When I plugged my HDD into my friends Vista, it also didn't pick it up. Went into disk management and it seemed to pick it up as a dynamic disk (didn't read) - and only when I converted to basic, did it pick up :/

Bear in mind, conversion loses all data
Click to expand...

You don't need to convert a dynamic disk back to basic. If you right click on the dynamic disk and select Import Foreign Disk it should work. The problem with dynamic disks are that they need to be imported every time you use it on another instance of an operating system as it's unique ID changes every time an import is done, which is linked to the current operating system instance it is being used on. With operating system instance I mean if you have duel boot or move from one machine to another, the operating systems are seen as different installations and each of them assign their own unique ID to dynamic disks imported on each of them.
 
Last edited:
Oh.

Had I know that, it would have saved me lots of time and effort ;)
 
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