Page 1 of New External USB Drive - Help

I`m having a bit of a blonde moment but can`t seem to work out what I am doing wrong. I`ve bought a new external drive to backup my computer. I`ve plugged it into the usb 2.0 socket, powered it up and it has been auto detected. In the hardware profile it shows up and is enabled. However, when I go to explorer it doesn`t show up as a drive (unlike my ipod for example).

How do I get it to appear so I can use it to back my data up?

Also, do I need to format it before hand? For info it`s a Samsung SP2514N (as displayed in device manager).

Thanks ever so :D

Riggs, was it bought as a complete "out of the box" unit, or did you buy a stand alone HDD and an external USB HDD case?
If it was an out of the box item, I`d have thought that it should have pluged and played, else if you made it up, then I`d have thought that you should set the HDD jumpers to MASTER and then format the HDD. Also, what version of windows are you running?

Hope it helps

LB2

Have you tried switching it on........?

Hi LB2 thanks for the quick answer. I effectively bought it as an out of the box solution, although the guy in the pc shop assembled it whilst I waited. I`m running XP SP2 and the strange thing is that when I switch it on it pops up as a USB storage device but without me being able to find it in Explorer. Strange!

Oh, and if I display properties in the `Safely remove hardware` box it shows the location as 0.

What I`d try first (sorry, not sure of your technical level, hope I`m not teaching you to suck eggs :) ) is open the case and have a look at the jumper settings (they are next to the connectors) this link to Samsung shows the positions of the jumpers. Ensure that they are set to the middle configuration of the 3 Master settings. In this configuration I would have at least thought that you would "see" the drive in explorer. If you can see the drive then it will probably need formatting.

LB2

Have you tried switching it on........?

You may have to go to the administrative tools in the control panel. Open the computer management console. Then go to disk management and you can mark the drive as active or format the drive from there.

Yep... I`d go with Gavin57 on that. The issue is that XP hasn`t "mounted" the drive - hence why it doesn`t appear in Explorer. If it is showing "connected" via USB and identified in Device Manager, then I think it is fairly safe to say the hardware settings are probably okay. The Disk Management tab in the Computer Managment Console will detect all connected drives and assign a Drive letter to them and Mount them. (Your internal boot drive will always be the C: Drive).

Regards,

Andy Woolford

It may be the drive letter assigned to it clashs with an existing one in use, DA will allow you to reassign it.



I quite like the Helpdesk people in a benevolent (as opposed to malevolent) way as they do some valuable work in preventing us being inundated by every halfwit who can work a phone.

Try this:-

Select Run from start menu and type diskmgmt.msc. Change the setting for dynamic to basic for your hard drive.

thanks to all of your help I`ve managed to `find` the drive. Disk management solved all of the problems and the drive has been recognised and formatted and now shows up as a drive in explorer.

Cheers :D