Laptop won't connect with external hardrive, help!

[Claire]

Ok, I have a Lacie 250Mb external hardrive. It's worked fine until last night when the laptop decided not to connect to it.

I KNOW it's the laptop that's the problem as I've tried every USB device I have & it works with the laptop. I've tried two Lacie cables, restarted both the Lacie & laptop XX amount of times. I've even tried the Lacie with another laptop & it installed the hardrive & worked fine.

I've uninstalled the Lacie connection on the laptop (says Hitachie blah blah) & reconnected the hardrive. It says "installed & ready to run", but it WON'T show as usual in "My Computer".

I'm getting sooo frustrated & mad! Please help me.

[tommykjensen]

Do you have another pc around you can try and connect the external drive to?

If you open disc management is the disc then available?

I have this problem with a maxtor drive. It won't connect properly on one pc (it has been connected properly once). On another pc there is no problem.

From time to time I experience this problem with another small external disc. I can usually get that disc to work by connecting it to a different USB port on the pc.

Sorry I don't have the solution for you.

[SuzyView]

How many USB ports do you have on the laptop? Try another one of them. Sometimes the port doesn't recognize the drive.

[Claire]

I've connected the bloody thing to every USB port on the laptop (3). Nothing.

I've tried with my other laptop & as I've never had it there it installed the hardware & all. Works fine on that laptop. I know, you're all wondering why I won't use that laptop then. Because the other is my old laptop that takes 5min to start & let's not mention how slow PS is...:rolleyes:

[condyk]

Plug it in. Uninstall any driver associated with it and try it as a plug and play device, i.e. reboot and then let Windows find it when it boots up. My Computer/Properties/Device Manager and see if there is a hard drive device with a question mark against it. Use Properties tab to uninstall. I have a Lacie and it works fine as is.

Isn't Lightstream an IT boffin?

[Eagle]

As condy and Karl have said try the drivers. That's what it sounds like. Do what condy suggests, that should onstall good drivers and should work from there.

[Claire]

Plug it in. Uninstall any driver associated with it and try it as a plug and play device, i.e. reboot and then let Windows find it when it boots up. My Computer/Properties/Device Manager and see if there is a hard drive device with a question mark against it. Use Properties tab to uninstall. I have a Lacie and it works fine as is.

Isn't Lightstream an IT boffin?

Apparently I'm not describing things so people understand. I've done the above. XX amount of times. Argh!

[condyk]

Apparently I'm not describing things so people understand. I've done the above. XX amount of times. Argh!

Correct ... so it's waste of my time if you can't be bothered spending time yourself describing exactly what you've done already. Good luck.

[Box Brownie]

Just my 2p's worth.

You say it worked OK up until last night and that you have tried it in every one of three ports available. So, to get back to basics - has anything else changed? By that I mean have to tired the LaCie only with no other USB connected devices? At the time of the 'failure' did you connect another USB device to one of the other ports? Is this LaCie an independantly powerd drive?

Sorry, I have mixed up my questions but with a little more detailed background "we" may be able to point to some other solutions to try.

HTH so far? :)

PS I am not an XP user (Win2000 here) but I have a vague recollection of something like this where XP decided it did not like the I.D. of the external drive and as such refused to allocate a drive letter and therefore show it in My Computer & Win Explorer i.e. it found the hardware (external case interface) but not the drive. If I can find the info I will post asap.

[Claire]

Correct ... so it's waste of my time if you can't be bothered spending time yourself describing exactly what you've done already. Good luck.

You forgot to make the rest of my sentence bold Dave. The part that said "...so people understand". Then I referred to your description & said that's what I've done. I figured others might understand your description better than mine. And I did spend time to explain what I've done (below), but excuse me if I didn't use the correct technical detailed explanation to help readers understand. At least I realised my explanation wasn't easily understood. I thought I rectified this by quoting your post & saying "I did what Condyk just said".

Sorry Dave, but unfortunately not everyone can be as good as you when making posts on POTN. Sorry for wasting your valuable time. Feel free to go back to watching footie.

I've uninstalled the Lacie connection on the laptop (says Hitachie blah blah) & reconnected the hardrive. It says "installed & ready to run", but it WON'T show as usual in "My Computer".

[Claire]

Again, did you check the manufacturer's website for updated drivers? Or for any known issues? XP doesn't like buggy or poorly written drivers and it's not uncommon for any version of Windows to corrupt drivers. Did you run the XP Device Troubleshooting function? There also could be a registry problem.

I'm going to look for info on the Lacie website tomorrow. According to the booklet the hardrive doesn't need specific drivers. You just plug it in & the hardrive finds the hardware automatically. That worked on my other laptop today.

XP Troubleshooter can't find anything wrong.

Last night I unplugged the Lacie hardrive (it's an independent drive I guess?), and tried to read a memory stick, but it didn't work. The MS worked to read today, but not my Lacie drive. I always use the Lacie without any other USB device being connected.

Oh well, I'll check their website tomorrow. Thanks anyway everyone!

[tommykjensen]

Did you try it exactly the way Dave described?

- plug it in
- uninstall drivers through device manager
- reboot (without unplugging the drive)
- let windows go through the "found new hardware" part

[Claire]

Did you try it exactly the way Dave described?

- plug it in
- uninstall drivers through device manager
- reboot (without unplugging the drive)
- let windows go through the "found new hardware" part

Yes, done that in that order. It doesn't find new hardware at all. I've even tried to manually find the hardware. Maybe I'm not doing it right...

I've tried rebooting without turning the Lacie on & doing it after waiting for the laptop to find the hardrive. I've tried rebooting with the Lacie on etc.

I think the laptop is just playing games with me the way it did with the MS. I'm gonna let it rest for the night. As long as the hardrive itself doesn't die on me I'm fine. Otherwise, bye bye all my work & photos.

[Jaime]

Claire on external devices what happens sometimes is that the drive letter becomes in conflict with an existing drive letter. What I would do is go to Start -> administrative tools -> computer management -> disk management -> look for the usb drive right click on it and choose to change the drive letter and choose a letter like Z for the drive letter. Close everything and go to my computer icon open it and see if you see it. Good luck.

[tommykjensen]

Yes, done that in that order. It doesn't find new hardware at all. I've even tried to manually find the hardware. Maybe I'm not doing it right...

I've tried rebooting without turning the Lacie on & doing it after waiting for the laptop to find the hardrive. I've tried rebooting with the Lacie on etc.

I think the laptop is just playing games with me the way it did with the MS. I'm gonna let it rest for the night. As long as the hardrive itself doesn't die on me I'm fine. Otherwise, bye bye all my work & photos.

Ohh. If I were you I would copy everything to your old laptop just in case so you have a copy.

[I Like to Watch]

My laptop is used for office work...as such, there are various "Network Drives" configured in "My Computer".

On occasions, I have had probelms in the past where I have had to disconnect (in software) these Network Drives in order to recognise devices on the USB ports (due to Drive Letter conflicts).

Not sure if you use yours away from home or not, but if so, maybe you will also have to disconnect the Network Drives....and reconfigure once you have finished with the external USB drive.

[Claire]

Kontiki, I'll try that tomorrow if it's still misbehaving.

Tommy, I know there's nothing wrong with the external hardrive. It's fine as I could access it on my other laptop. The other laptop doesn't have enough space for all the photos. I should probably continue my CD backup as well...

[tommykjensen]

I get that the drive is ok. But as you work on getting it to be recognised there is always a risk you make a mistake and bye bye....

So if there is not enough space on the old laptop I would suggest you postpone further trouble shooting until you got a complete backup on cd's or multiple pc's maybe a server at work if you can "borrow" space there.

[Claire]

Maybe I should get a backup for my backup... :rolleyes:


Oooh, it's working. Whoohooo! :D

Now to start burning CDs again... Damn I need a new laptop with a DVD writer...

[tommykjensen]

I thought you didn't have a backup??

Otherwise, bye bye all my work & photos.

[Claire]

Tommy, oh I used to backup on CDs, then I bought the external hardrive as a storage/backup place for all my photos. I intended to continue burning the CDs, but I've been lazy. Maybe I should get a 2nd external drive to backup the 1st one.:confused:

[I Like to Watch]

Oooh, it's working. Whoohooo! :D

...

.....and the fix was ?????

[Claire]

.....and the fix was ?????

No clue. I just rebooted again & suddenly it decided to work. Computers!!

[I Like to Watch]

So you weren't standing on one leg with the wind blowing in the right direction and muttering magical utterances to the PC Gods ? :lol:

[Claire]

So you weren't standing on one leg with the wind blowing in the right direction and muttering magical utterances to the PC Gods ? :lol:

No, more like the opposite while muttering "Ok, ONE last reboot for today, then F it!" :lol: