Vista - problem with installing external HD

i bought a western digital My book essentials 500GB external hard disk a few
days before. instead of gaining direct access to the drive, i was prompt to
install the driver software. however, vista couldn't find the software. the
HD is supposed to be plug and play. what can i do here? the HD works with
other computers. my newly bought MP3 player is also facing the same problem.
please help!

Hey Geek, How are you connecting, USB or Firewire? I have the WB My Book
Premium Edition, and I use the Firewire. Plug it in and bing its there.
However, I would suggest, turning off your PC, plug in the wire for your WD,
turn on your WD and then turn on your PC. Open My Computer and it should be
there. If it is not, go to START button, ALL Programs, ADMINISTRATIVE Tools,
COMPUTER Management. Look at the Console Tree on the left and scan down to
Storage. Under Storage select DISK Management. This will open up showing
all and everything connected to your PC. Do you see your WD? Is it
"ONLINE"? Check back when you've got the above done and if still stuck, well
we will go from there!

Good Luck ~~~~ Gunny

"Geek" wrote:

I had this same problem with the same HDD. After hooking it up with the Rig off it took FOREVER to boot up.
It worked fine for a while then Vista lost its Mind.
I've had so many problems out of it I gave it to my Wife for her Rig with XP, it's been working fine for 4 Months now... :O(
After I get SP1 going I might try it again.
I think it has to do with Vista's drivers not properly recognizing USB and SATA HDD's.
I've also had ALLOT of Headaches with the 3 150Gb Western Digital Raptors inside. They'll work great for a while then it's like they aren't there. I also have 2 DVD drives in SATA and the only thing I've found so far tha't worked was to unplug 1 DVD drive and update the firmware in the other. So far so good.

Sorry I don't have an answer. I'll keep looking here to see if anyone knows what the deal is...

P.S.Gunny, I tried the Firewire trick and it didn't work for me. It might also be the M/Board I'm using...

thanks Gunny, i am using USB to connect my WD. i do not see WD in disk
management. I tried your method but it doen't work.
"Seidell23231" wrote:

I'm having the same problem with the WD Essential 750gb. I have 2 250gb WD's
that "purr". I've tried a few suggested remedies w/ no success, though I'm
about to try hooking things up and rebooting but w/ little confidence that'll
work. Has anyone come up with a solution to this problem?

One solution was to go to right click Start button, go to explore, type in
C:\windows\inf, scroll down and find the INFCACHE.1, right click and go to
properties, Security; Edit, Add, type in Administrators, OK, then give Admin
full control. OK. Then go to the Inf folder and delete INFCACHE.1 file,
then hook up the WD and pray. My prayers weren't answered!




"KentuckyRanger" wrote:

"KentuckyRanger" wrote:

"KentuckyRanger" wrote:
Hi! I am kind of glad I'm not losing my mind after all! My 500gb WD just
quit after 12months and I lost all tje material it had on it! It shows as an
error of DR1 has a bad block. What the heck does tis mean and did I really
loose a years worth of work? Now Vista Ultimate doesn't even show it as
connected! Ideas anyone?

the good news is you haven't lost the data on you external drive, Vista just stopped recognizing it.
with the power off unplugg the drive and boot the cputer.
then turn it off.
plug the drive into a different USB port and boot.
this will force Vista to look for it again and should bring it back as a usable drive once more.
if not you can hook it up to another computer to get your data.

Found my answer! I took the thing back to Circuit City, had them check it
and they had the same problem. Got another, (1Tb), had them check it and it
hooked up just fine. Brought it home, hooked it to my Vista computer and
though it took a minute to recognize it did and it's up and running just
fine!.. Took 12 hours to transfer 224 gb to it, but so far so good!

"JollyRodger" wrote:

I haven't tried it yet but after installing SP-1 I might hook one up and see if I'd made a difference.
from what I've read and the things I'm going throgh I'd say its nVidia's lousy SATA controller.
I know it's an external USB drive but man have I had problems out of my internal drives as well.
I'll let Y'all know what happens.