I recently purchased an external hard drive for my computer and when i plug it in absolutley nothing happens. It is not showing up anywhere on my computer. I have read all kinds of troubleshooting pages and tried every suggestion!

It is not in My Computer, under Device Management, under Disk Management, does not show up under safely remove hardware, and I am out of ideas!!

My OS is windows XP and supposedly there are no driver updates required for the use of my hard drive with this OS. If anyone knows of anything I might not have tried to resolve this problem I would really appreciate some suggestions!!!

Thank you very much!!!!

Does the external drive have an AC adapter or is is supposed to be powered through USB only? If it is the latter, can you actually hear the drive spin up and do the lights come on?

As the above post, and also, is it a complete unit, or is it a hdd you have put into an external caddy?
If so, make sure the jumper on the hdd is set to CS (cable select).

If its new, just speak to the vendor and get advice, or a refund!

You also might consider whether the USB cable connecting the hard drive is faulty. Do you have a known working USB 2.0 cable that you can try with the hardware?

Thanks for the feedback

I plugged it in wrong. Feel real smart!