Page 1 of Annoying USB Hard Drive Problem

I`ve had this for 6 months or so now, driving me mad. In the past I`ve managed to fix it by opening up Device Manager and uninstalling all USB devices then doing a scan for new hardware, but even this doesn`t seem to fix it.

Basically my external USB hard drive has disappeared, I don`t even hear the alert noise when you insert and remove it, yet it works fine connected to my laptop with the same lead. Doesn`t matter what USB hub I connect it to either.

It really isn`t there as far as Windows 7 (64 bit) is concerned.

Has anybody had this issue before? And know how to fix it? Driving me mad as I use this drive for backups. :/ My other external HDDs that I plug in to back up stuff work fine, just this doesn`t. :/


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Does your router have a USB port?

I`ve got a flash drive plugged into my router acting as a network drive.

===========================
Jitendar Canth

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Quote:
Jitendar Canth says...
Does your router have a USB port?Nope. I`d kind of like to fix the problem rather than work around it anyway. :/


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On XP, I`ve seen it where a USB device has had its drive letter nicked by another device and Windows wasn`t smart enough to change it. The drive just disappears. In XP you could find it in drive manager and change the letters but I don`t know the equivalent in 7.


EDITED to remove illiteracy...
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Could someone please
Remove these cutleries
From my knees...

This item was edited on Friday, 1st October 2010, 12:55

IIRC (doing this from memory)...it`s "Computer Manager" in both XP & Win7...then "Drive Management".
If the drive shows up there then it`s probably as Mister Smee says.

I`ve had this with the drive letter changing thingymajig and it`s annoying as hell.
You have to check for more than one thing per drive though.
First it`s whether Windoze auto assigns the drive letter or if manually assigned and I think the other is whether it has a maximum letter.
Can`t remember if the fix is to manually or automatically assign though.

Path to Drive Management in XP is Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management
Probably a shorter path but that`s how I do it and not sure about Vista or Win7.

I`ve also had it where it`s the driver for that specific device has gone kerblooey and the fix for it was to remove all my USB controllers in Device Manager, remove all physical USB devices from their ports (remembering which went where) and reboot.
Let Windoze find all the controllers again, plug in devices.

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

Yes, I`ve had that too, but it`s not the problem. It doesn`t seem to detect the USB device at all. :/


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And you`ve tried a different USB port? Does it need external power? The port may not be pushing out enough juice.

Also, try a different cable in case the one you are using doesn`t go quite all the way in on the socket.

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Could someone please
Remove these cutleries
From my knees...

Quote:
Robert John Shepherd says...
Yes, I`ve had that too, but it`s not the problem. It doesn`t seem to detect the USB device at all.Uhhuh and that`s what I was getting with mine and the remove-usb-controller-and-restart method was how I got around it.
It was yonks ago mind you.

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"