Comments on: Trouble connecting an external drive in Vista?

By: Andre

Andre — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:01:51 +0000

It worked for me. Thanks a lot!!

By: Koos

Koos — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:14:08 +0000

I have sort of a similar situation but this solution didn’t work. My previous laptop running XP Home crashed (motherboard), the hard drive was fine so I goy myself an external case and bought a new laptop running Vista Home Premium. When I connect the USB external I can see the drive and all the folders but I dont have access to my profile in the Doc&settings folder. I have tried taking ownnership of these folders and some files (as per a similar post on this site) but when I try to open these I still get access denied. Please can anyone shed some light on how to get access to this drive – Thanks in advance.

By: Security Sofware

Security Sofware — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:04:38 +0000

To the previous poster: I think that the reason a pop-up like that would not come up is because, since the security settings are as they are, Vista does not even recognize that you plugged the drive in. Still, I see your point. An option like the one you mentioned would make just as much sense during the initial install of the OS or the first boot of a new system. I never understand why these software developers choose to just handicap us like that, and force the community to come up with workarounds.

By: Antivirus

Antivirus — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:49:55 +0000

Sheesh…where were you when I needed you? I have an external hard drive that I filled up with about 100GB of Beatles studio outtakes and bootlegs. When I tried to access the drive in my Vista laptop, it would not recognize the drive. I figured it was Vista, but I had no idea how to workaround it. The question is, since this OS is supposed to INCREASE usability, why not a simple pop-up upon plugging in the HDD that says something like, ‘The security settings required to operate this device are not enabled. Would you liek to enable them at this time?” That’s all it would take…But, instead, I bought a whole new external. Oh well, more room for my files I suppose…

By: alan bailey

alan bailey — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:58:22 +0000

Got Home Basic – external HD in unnamed box works perfectly on XP. Vista allocates drive letter but ‘access denied’ Interestingly if I change permissions to the drive letter it goes through every file on the HD. Changing the registry as above did nothing.

By: Sidney

Sidney — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:17:51 +0000

It worked great……Thank You

By: dave

dave — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:31:44 +0000

Thanks for the info, worked like a charm on Home Premium

By: joe

joe — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:52:11 +0000

thnx for the info…..ill try that when i get home. ive had nothing but obsticles with vista. my desktop gave out and am trying to retrieve percious saves on an external hdd. i miss xp :/ (fingers crossed)

By: mayer

mayer — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:24:48 +0000

Appreciate the post.
However, I have Vista Home, and I even did the steps you outlined with regedit (actually similar instructions from another forum a few days ago). Still no dice. Vista won’t show my drive nor will it allow me to connect to my Mac directly. Serves me right I guess – I never have such problems with Macs.

By: Julio

Julio — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:41:02 +0000

It may sound ridiculous but in this particular case you have a new Operating System that defaults to newer security methods that are more effective. I don’t have a problem with that and I would say it’s the way things work with software. Operating Systems eventually have to drop some legacy support and Apple and Microsoft do it all the time (actually MS is the more conservative company about this).

I agree however that the options for making HDDs work are too buried and we should get proper obvious support not only from the OS but from the hard drive manufacturer.