Hi everyone I hope everyone had a good Xmas and new year, my wife bought me for Xmas a 1TB hard drive and a usb external caddy which we intend to use as a back up for all our important documents, pics, videos, etc. I have assembled it and connected it to my computer which recognises it but it is not showing up in the drives when I go to my computer which I want it to do I am running windows xp. It does show in the device manager and it is obviously recognised as I get the tell tale donk when connecting or disconnecting any suggestions welcome thanks Chris
external usb hard drive
- Thread starter chrisf-1
- Start date
This happens often with external devices in XP.
Go to Start, highlight but don't click on "My Computer"
Right click and choose "manage"
Go to Disk Management on the left
Does the drive show up in this list when it's connected to the PC? If so, right click on the drive icon in the bottom (where it shows the available space, etc) and choose "Assign or Change Drive Letter"
That should fix it. Let me know if you need clarification.
Go to Start, highlight but don't click on "My Computer"
Right click and choose "manage"
Go to Disk Management on the left
Does the drive show up in this list when it's connected to the PC? If so, right click on the drive icon in the bottom (where it shows the available space, etc) and choose "Assign or Change Drive Letter"
That should fix it. Let me know if you need clarification.
Hi og and thanks for your reply I have followed your instructions which go fine until the last bit I have right clicked on everything to do with that drive and I am not getting the option assign or change drive letter it is probably me doing something wrong but what I do not know any suggestions please.The drive has unallocated underneath it. Thanks Chris
supernerd
Baseband Member
- Messages
- 30
Hello chrisf-1
The option "Assign or Change Drive Letter" does not show up because the disk doesn't have a file system (it's not formatted yet). Follow og's procedure again but instead of the "Assign or Change Drive Letter" option, look for "New Partition..." and follow this procedure. The wizard is pretty straight-forward but just in-case:
1) Click Next
2) Select "Primary Partition"
3) The next window gives you the option to make multiple partitions so if you wanted to keep videos, documents, and pictures separated logically instead of through folders you could do so, but for the sake of consistency let it be and just click Next.
4) This is where you assign the drive letter. Windows automatically gives you the next letter in line, so just click next.
5) Make sure the "Format this partition with the following settings" circle is selected.
a. The first 2 input boxes should be set to [NTFS] and [default]
b. Volume label is whatever you wanna call you external drive, for example My Recovery Files.
c. Last is the "Perform a quick format" and "Enable file and folder compression" selection boxes. The first one should be unchecked only if there was data previously on it, but if this is a brand-spankin-new drive. Check the box and the second one I would recommend selecting IF and ONLY if you're using this external drive for backup files because then you can stuff more on it.
6) Before Windows does anything, you can review what you have selected to be applied to your external drive. Make sure Windows is gonna do a quick format. If you're going to do a full format...STOP. You did say this is a 1TB drive correct? While I'm not sure why it wouldn't already be partitioned but DO NOT click next just yet. 1,000 GB will take a looooooooong time to format. So...I would HIGHLY recommend doing this procedure in the evening so the drive formats overnight and even through your day of work. So make sure Windows will "Perform a quick format" and the click finish.
Now anytime you connect you're external drive to your machine, it should not require you to go back into "Disk Management" to assign it a drive letter. That really only occurs with flash drives, Lexar in particular.
Hope this works out for you.
The option "Assign or Change Drive Letter" does not show up because the disk doesn't have a file system (it's not formatted yet). Follow og's procedure again but instead of the "Assign or Change Drive Letter" option, look for "New Partition..." and follow this procedure. The wizard is pretty straight-forward but just in-case:
1) Click Next
2) Select "Primary Partition"
3) The next window gives you the option to make multiple partitions so if you wanted to keep videos, documents, and pictures separated logically instead of through folders you could do so, but for the sake of consistency let it be and just click Next.
4) This is where you assign the drive letter. Windows automatically gives you the next letter in line, so just click next.
5) Make sure the "Format this partition with the following settings" circle is selected.
a. The first 2 input boxes should be set to [NTFS] and [default]
b. Volume label is whatever you wanna call you external drive, for example My Recovery Files.
c. Last is the "Perform a quick format" and "Enable file and folder compression" selection boxes. The first one should be unchecked only if there was data previously on it, but if this is a brand-spankin-new drive. Check the box and the second one I would recommend selecting IF and ONLY if you're using this external drive for backup files because then you can stuff more on it.
6) Before Windows does anything, you can review what you have selected to be applied to your external drive. Make sure Windows is gonna do a quick format. If you're going to do a full format...STOP. You did say this is a 1TB drive correct? While I'm not sure why it wouldn't already be partitioned but DO NOT click next just yet. 1,000 GB will take a looooooooong time to format. So...I would HIGHLY recommend doing this procedure in the evening so the drive formats overnight and even through your day of work. So make sure Windows will "Perform a quick format" and the click finish.
Now anytime you connect you're external drive to your machine, it should not require you to go back into "Disk Management" to assign it a drive letter. That really only occurs with flash drives, Lexar in particular.
Hope this works out for you.
supernerd
Baseband Member
- Messages
- 30
detox,
The issue chrisf-1 is having was do to the hard drive being unpartitioned. It happens with any hard drive in a Windows NT architecture to the best of my knowledge(Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003). It definitely happens all the time in Windows Server 2003. It was a real "head-scratcher" for me until I figured it out too. I have purchased brand new hard drives, and installed them in systems then them not showing up in windows. Many I assume come from the factory unpartitioned, some are low-level formatted. So no, it's not just 1TB drives. But when you format it and assign a drive letter to it...that's it. You only need to do one time to that hard drive.
The issue chrisf-1 is having was do to the hard drive being unpartitioned. It happens with any hard drive in a Windows NT architecture to the best of my knowledge(Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003). It definitely happens all the time in Windows Server 2003. It was a real "head-scratcher" for me until I figured it out too. I have purchased brand new hard drives, and installed them in systems then them not showing up in windows. Many I assume come from the factory unpartitioned, some are low-level formatted. So no, it's not just 1TB drives. But when you format it and assign a drive letter to it...that's it. You only need to do one time to that hard drive.
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