Hello all,
I have just recently decided to get an external hard drive for storage purposes only. I read some where online that you could build your own for half the price, instead of just buying one. So on that note I bought an external hard drive case off line and used an old Western Digital 60GB hard drive that I have left over from an old system.
I have the WD 60GB set up as a slave unit and I can hear windows (XP PRO) recognize the drive when I plug it in and turn it on. (Via USB 2.0). How ever when I go into my computer its not there, and when I try the disk manager is shows the drive as a mass USB storage device but not as hard drive. I can’t seem to find any other evidence that it’s even there other then a USB mass storage device. Can someone please help me!! :confused:
Thanks

Does the drive show up in disk management (enter diskmgmt.msc into the run box) and if so has it been partitioned? - or does it just contain unallocated space?

Paul thanks for the reply, here is the deal when I access “diskmgmt.msc” the drive is not there. How ever when I access the computer management (start- control panel-administrative tools- computer management) I can see the drive under the device manager and then Disk drives. And its there as a USB Mass storage. I have tried to give it a device letter in dos and in windows and but I can’t. I have also tried to format it through dos. I even took it to a friends house to see if that computer would recognize it (it did but only in the same way mine has).
Do you know of any other ways that I might be able to try?

The thread at http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?p=587050#post587050 relates to a camera but the basic problem would seem to be the same. Can you access the device in Safe Mode (with networking) as was the case in that thread. It sounds likely to be a "drivers problem". Also do you have any SPs installed?

Another thing to try would be to log on as a different user.

ref: http://forums.windrivers.com/archive/index.php/t-59525.html

What I did was to temporarily connect the IDE HDD as the Primary Master [jumper set as Master] and use the HDD manufacturers utility floppy to Partition and format it as a non-active primary partition, then shut down the PC.
Fit the HDD into the external housing [still jumpered as Master]; connect it; switch on the PC, boot into Windows and switch on the housing.
When the "new device" is detected, install the USB 2.0 driver that matches the type of connecting cable [AT2 in my case] and the OS [Win98SE].
"Safely Remove" [using the icon in the System Tray], switch off the housing and reboot. Once rebooted into Windows, if you switch on the housing it should be detected, displayed and be working and accessible.

Here's the thread http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=36519
Don't bother reading all the hassle in the middle; go straight from the beginning to the conclusion at the end.

I suppose bad hardware such as a wonky USB cable could be involved but from what I have been able to find so far, this specific problem of a mass storage device being seen in Device Manager but not in Disk Managment seems to be mostly reported with respect to WinXP and with its SP2 in particular. There are quite a few reports of this specific problem but rather few definitive solutions.