Hey so firstly, I have spent about 5 hours searching through these and many other forums looking for some sort answer. I am very noobish when it comes to this stuff.

So when I plug in my external hard drive (ComStar 650gb) it seems to take a good 5-10 mins before it is detected by either of my comps. PC = win xp, Laptop = W7

When it finally is detected, it shows up as USB Mass Storage device. Drivers are all working fine, updated etc. I have updated everything I possible can on my computers, Motherboard etc.

I go into Device manager and its there and working aparently.

When I go to disk management, it shows up as disk 1, but I cannot format it, the only option is to initialize it. So I try to initialize it and I get an error saying that it cannot be initialized.

I don't know what else to include, but if any other info is needed just let me know.

I'm expecting those extremely useless posts about "use the search" etc, but I already have and haven't found the same problem. If I missed it, then how bout just linking it to me in place of "search for it" since you have obviously searched for and found the topic.

What you are reporting is normal.
What do you want to reformat it while it is in external drive mode?
But, wait, is it really a ComStar drive? What cables are connected?
How is it formatted?

Ahh the important info I forgot of course

Its a comstar external usb hard drive. Normal USB cable (printer style)

Uses external power, normal a/c plug in.

It's formatted in NTFS and also 200gb is FAT32 for my ps3.

Ill do whatever it takes to make it work, be it reformatting etc. I backed it up recently anyways.

for this to be true, you must have two partitions showing up in the Disk Manager.

The Fat32 should be visible to everyone as there's no security on Fat32, but
the NTFS has Security-- for an external device, it is usually set to Everyone=Full Control.

Well the last time that it worked, I had both those partitions on it. As of now it doesnt show me anything else. I made a couple screenies:





Disk Management shows me: Disk 1, Unknown, Not Initialized

So I right click to try and initialize and it gives me the options: Initialize Disk(not clickable), Offline, Properties and Help.

I clicked Offline just to test, and I get an error "Incorrect Function"



I don't know what else to post at the moment.