help! external HD problem
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- nocomply
I have an external enclosure with a regular hard drive inside. It was working just fine earlier today, but tonight I plugged it in and both the red and the green indicator lights came on. I can hear the drive start up and spin. When I connect the drive to my Win XP machine I hear the connection chimes, but the drive is not recognized at all. I get the "safely remove hardware" icon in the bottom right, but when I click to open it up no hardware devices are in there.
I'm guessing that the HD is fine and its just the case that doesn't work. I have tested it on multiple PCs and got the same problem. Has anyone had a similar problem?
- Mojo0
Whip the HD out, stick something else in, see if it works.
It's either the interface or the HD.
Maybe a cable is just unplugged.
x
- mbr0
and this is why I guy Maxtor external drives ;-)
- acescence0
if it spins up fine but doesn't mount, it could be the catalog is damaged.
- joyride0
what brand of HD is in the encloser? Just curious.
But you need to try another drive in the enclosure, or try the drive in a computer. Figure out which part is bad, interface or drive.
- Mojo0
Oh yeah another thing, with my enclosure in winXP I have to goto computer management (start-run type 'compmgmt.msc' - Disk Management - then something, and right click on my hard drive and click 'reactivate'.
Only than can I access it at all.
x
- acescence0
is it an ntfs disk? do you have it mapped to a folder or something?
- nocomply0
Thanks for the help thus far everyone. The drive is a cheap seagate 200GB inside a generic brand compUSA enclosure. I personally think its the enclosure that's broken so I'm going to buy a new one after work today and throw the drive in there and see if it works. I'm scared to hook the drive up in my primary machine because I have a bad history with destroying computers.
- nocomply0
Problem solved...in typical fashion of myself nonetheless.
After I go out, buy a new external enclosure, bring it home, open it up, etc... I'm taking out the HD from the old enclosure I notice it comes out rather easily...BECAUSE IT WAS DISCONNECTED IN THE BACK!!! If you just look at it you would think it was connected, but ofcourse I was too smart to double check it last night. I am so pissed, but happy at the same time.