External Drive not recognised

Farmerbindy

New Member
Bought a new external HDD but my computer won't recognise it. The lights are on but no-one's home, so to speak. I've tried unplugging it and plugging it in again. Tried restarting it with drive attached. Tried it with the supplied 2-headed-USB lead and with a different lead, in several different USB ports - back, front, hub, powered hub. The best result I got was that once the computer tried to load the drivers for the device and then said the device was not recognised and got the "try again or replace the device" message. It doesn't show up at all in the device manager, so I can't even update the drivers to make it work.
This computer has done this before with a couple of other devices -most recently with a hard drive that used to work on this machine until the power supply for it burnt out, but then I had to do a fresh reload of Windows and suddenly the HDD won't show up even with a new power supply.
Usually it's a case of finding drivers or firmware or windows updates that fixes it, but since I bought this from ebay without packaging and don't even know what model the HDD is, I'm going to have trouble finding the right program for this one. The HDD did work for a few minutes on my Windows 7 laptop, so the HDD should be functioning (though it then decided to reject it from that computer, too, so maybe driver issues there, as well?)
Any ideas?
 

My Computer

So, you bought a "new" HDD without packaging and have no idea what brand and model number it is? There's no markings anywhere to signify the model number? Any reputable hard drive maker will indicate this very pertinent information somewhere, in addition to all the stampings of approval from various authorities (UL, CE, FCC, etc). Either the seller stripped off the placard or put the drive in a generic casing, both of which raise the suspicion meter into the uneasy zone. FWIW, I recommend you stick to brand new sealed package HDD's in the future. It brings a peace of mind as well as the recourse to return it or get warranty service. With this particular HDD, you may not even have the chance to return it to the eBay seller if it is established that it is faulty.

If your Vista installed computer has a history of not recognizing other devices, this compounds the problem. But, you say that the HDD worked only for a few minutes in W7 before it ended up "rejected" or not recognized. Maybe you have a bad USB cable. Try swapping that out and getting the HDD to work on your W7 machine before anything else. You want to establish that it's a functioning device before dealing with the problem child Vista computer.

Finally, be sure you've applied SP2 (service pack 2) to Vista and run Windows Update to get all of the latest updates. Earlier versions of Vista had device driver issues that were rectified in SP2 and later.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavillion dv5t
    CPU
    Intel Core Duo 2.53GHz
    Memory
    4Gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GeForce 9600M GT 512Mb
    Screen Resolution
    1280x800 32bit
    Hard Drives
    Seagate Momentus XT 500Gb
    Hitachi Travelstar HTS543225L9A300 250Gb
    Mouse
    Microsoft 4000
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