Vista Recognizes Ext HD in Device Mgr But Not in My Computer

Tumbleweed1

New Member
[FONT=&quot]I have two Iomega 500 GB Hard Drives connected to system. Both are brand new and are physically identical to each other. The first one is connected via USB and shows up in Vista “My Computer” as “Iomega HDD (K) and is working fine. The second drive had been connected in the same manner and showed up in “My Computer” as “Iomega HDD (L) which was also correct. I have been able to successfully move data to each drive.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Now, after removing each from Vista (Home Premium SP1), powering each off and then adding them back into the system and powering them on later, I am having a problem with the “L:” drive. After reconnection, the “K:” drive showed up successfully again as “Iomega HDD (K)” and is usable as it had been previously.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The “L:” drive on the other hand, when reconnected as it had been previously did not show up in “My Computer” this time at all. It did show up in “Device Manager” simply named as “USB Device”. I did a Google search on the problem and found a recommendation to go to “Adminstrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Management”, click on the drive and “mark partition as active”. I did that but it didn’t fix the problem.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I noticed that it did give me the option of assigning a drive letter to the drive however so I manually assigned the correct letter “L:” to it. Now it shows up in “my computer” as “Local Disk “L:” however instead of as “Iomega HDD (L) as it should be showing up. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Furthermore, under properties the” L:” drive shows up as having 0 bytes used and 0 bytes available. This of course is incorrect since the drive has 465 GB capacity and should show up with some portion of that used and some portion available. It only other option provided now for the drive (in "Disk Management" is to format the drive. That of course is unnecessary since it was already formatted in NTFS format when I received it and it now has data on it.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I’ve tried properly disconnecting the drives, rebooting the system and reconnecting them again and that has made no difference with the problem. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Right now the drives show up in “Computer Management\Disk Management” like this:[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Disk 5, Basic, 465.76 GB, Online[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Iomega HDD (K) [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]465.76 GB NTFS[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Healthy (Primary Partition)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Disk 6, Basic, 465.76 GB, Online[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot](L)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]465.76 GB RAW[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Healthy, (Active, Primary Partition)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Can someone give me some idea of why the second external HD is not showing up correctly as the first one is and what I need to do to get it back online properly? I can reformat it if needed since the data currently on it is replaceable but I can’t see why I should have to do that since it had already been formatted once. [/FONT]

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My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
    CPU
    Inspiron 530s
    Motherboard
    Intel Core2 Duo processor E4500 (2.20GHz 800FSB) w/Dual Core
    Memory
    2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell 22" Flat Panel Wide Screen Display
    Screen Resolution
    1680 x 1050
    Hard Drives
    2 x 250 GB Internal Hard Drives (Dell DataSafe 250GB (Secured Storage and Data Recovery Solution), 2 x 500 GB Iomega Prestige External Hard Drives
    Case
    Slimline
    Mouse
    Kensington Trackball
    Internet Speed
    6Mbps broadband cable
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