G'day Guys...
“I hear the two tone when I plug in the drive, a few bubbles show up in the lower right corner ending with "Your hardware is installed." I can't find the drive in My Computer or in the Computer Management. The drive is, however, being recognized by the Device Manager as both USB and Disk Drive, but I can't access them.”
You are not alone. I was suffering the exact same problem!
I have tried my HD on several other computers and all of them have done the same thing...
I just solved my problem with guidance from these forums*, and as the quoted post was the one that showed up on google when I was looking for answers it seems right to post my solution here... but enough of story time, lets get to the point...
The HD i had troubles with was brand new, and my PC was behaving exactly the same way as described above. Exactly!
What I had to do was Format the HD so my pc could knew how to access it. Here Is how:
- Right click on My Computer
- Left click on Manage, a window should open called Computer Management
- Left click on Disk management and look in the bottom right hand corner window for your external drive.
- When i got to this step it said my EHD was Disk one and it had a Big black bar across the top of it, which according to the Key means the space is Unallocated. Make sure you have the right Disk or you could wipe the wrong drive (If its not there then you should probably not go any further!)
- Right click on the EHD and left click on new partition.
- New partition Wizard will open, click next.
- Select Primary partition, then click next.
- The window will ask you what the partition size is to be. Make sure its the Maximum disk space in Mega Bytes. (shown above the box!) Hit next.
- Assign the Drive a Name. whatever letter you want, as long as it wont be the same as another drive you have. I chose Q, because who honestly has a drive Q! I found that if i didn't assign a Drive name, the EHD didn't show up in My computer.
- The next Step asks you about formatting the drive. you can choose to format the drive and give it specifications to your wants, or choose not to format at that time. it doesn't really matter. One way or another you will have to format the drive. Either in this step, which will finish the new partition wizard and format the EHD in the Computer management window...
OR
When you try to open the drive through My computer A window will pop up telling you the drive is unformatted and ask if you want to format!
You cannot use the drive until it is formatted.
Either way the drive should be in your My computer window as soon as the New Partition Wizard is Closed!
Well thats what worked for me anyway... Good Luck!
*special thanks to everyone whose post gave me ideas and things to try.
“I hear the two tone when I plug in the drive, a few bubbles show up in the lower right corner ending with "Your hardware is installed." I can't find the drive in My Computer or in the Computer Management. The drive is, however, being recognized by the Device Manager as both USB and Disk Drive, but I can't access them.”
You are not alone. I was suffering the exact same problem!
I have tried my HD on several other computers and all of them have done the same thing...
I just solved my problem with guidance from these forums*, and as the quoted post was the one that showed up on google when I was looking for answers it seems right to post my solution here... but enough of story time, lets get to the point...
The HD i had troubles with was brand new, and my PC was behaving exactly the same way as described above. Exactly!
What I had to do was Format the HD so my pc could knew how to access it. Here Is how:
- Right click on My Computer
- Left click on Manage, a window should open called Computer Management
- Left click on Disk management and look in the bottom right hand corner window for your external drive.
- When i got to this step it said my EHD was Disk one and it had a Big black bar across the top of it, which according to the Key means the space is Unallocated. Make sure you have the right Disk or you could wipe the wrong drive (If its not there then you should probably not go any further!)
- Right click on the EHD and left click on new partition.
- New partition Wizard will open, click next.
- Select Primary partition, then click next.
- The window will ask you what the partition size is to be. Make sure its the Maximum disk space in Mega Bytes. (shown above the box!) Hit next.
- Assign the Drive a Name. whatever letter you want, as long as it wont be the same as another drive you have. I chose Q, because who honestly has a drive Q! I found that if i didn't assign a Drive name, the EHD didn't show up in My computer.
- The next Step asks you about formatting the drive. you can choose to format the drive and give it specifications to your wants, or choose not to format at that time. it doesn't really matter. One way or another you will have to format the drive. Either in this step, which will finish the new partition wizard and format the EHD in the Computer management window...
OR
When you try to open the drive through My computer A window will pop up telling you the drive is unformatted and ask if you want to format!
You cannot use the drive until it is formatted.
Either way the drive should be in your My computer window as soon as the New Partition Wizard is Closed!
Well thats what worked for me anyway... Good Luck!
*special thanks to everyone whose post gave me ideas and things to try.
