Hardware Drivers :: External Drive Shows In Devices But Cannot Access
Jan 14, 2014
I have an iomega portable usb drive. I can plug into any of my windows 7 machines and access the files and store data on it. when I put into my win 8 machine it shows in devices and printers and in my computer shows as removable disk but you cannot open it up.
I have went into device manager and tried to update the usb driver installed but no use at all.
really strange that it shows in devices and printers but I cannot get the files.
the thing is I need to install and transfer some backups onto my win 8 machine so I need it to work desperately.
I have a Dell Inspiron 660 PC w/windows 8.1 no matter what I plug into the usb port I cannot find it on my computer. I hear the connect/disconnect sound, but can't find anything on the computer as to where it is at or how to open it. The device is a storage device with photos. It also does the same thing with my phone. I hear it, but nothing opens or comes up anywhere.
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro x86 WMC External Hard Drive: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex (No external Power Required) Problem: I can't access my External Hard Drive. See The Screenshot Below.
Solution Applied: Drive letter changed. (Not Worked)
Also tried Properties - Security - Advanced - Owner to Everyone. (Not Worked)
Checked the HDD in another PC Windows 8.1 x64. (Not Worked)
I connected the HDD then I installed the "Better-Explorer" through that i can access my external hdd normally but If I Reboot my PC then same Problem with the "Better-Explorer". & If I install The "Better-Explorer" Then if I connect my HDD Then from the beginning i can't access the HDD.
In Tune-Up Utilities Their is Disk Explorer through that I can explore my Ex HDD Drive. I right clicked on my drive from Tune-up & checked the disk for error and then repaired it (Windows Error checking tool) and then reboot my PC but it is still the same.
Over the last couple days, I built a new PC and installed windows 8.1. Initially I had some issues installing windows, so I unplugged all my drives except the SSD and DVD. I installed windows to my SSD.
Everything works great!
Now I started adding my drives back in 1 at a time. When I plugged my 2nd SSD in, it showed up in BIOS, but not in Disk Management or Device Manager. So I booted back into the install CD, it showed up in the disk manager there. Since this was also a blank SSD, I partitioned and formated the drive from the install CD, then exited the installer and booted back to my windows drive.
I have 2 SSD drives working great!
Now to add my 2TB HDD... Same issue, it shows up in BIOS and the install disc, but not in Disk Management or Device Manager. This drive does not have a boot partition on it, however, it does have two existing data partitions. They were made from my previous windows 7 system and the option to delete these partitions is grayed out in the install disc menu. I also have some data that I would like to keep on it. I have a USB dock that I can use to read the contents of the disk just fine. Everything is there and in working order.
What is different about Windows 8.1 that is preventing my hard drives from showing up in windows proper? I am reading things about UEFI online, but nothing seems to fit my exact scenario. I will try and post some screen shots when I get back at it.
My friend happened to look in Devices and Printers, and in the Multimedia Devices section he had about 10 devices showing up that he never heard of. Six of them were computers with names that he had never heard of, the others were devices that we could not tell what they were.
I expect that these entries mean that at some time they were on the same network that he was on. Would that be correct?
If so, then it is a matter for concern because he never goes on public networks. He only goes on his network at home, and a network in a small office that he rents and shares with one other person. They have their own router with security set up on it, and that router is connected to an Ethernet jack that most likely goes to a switch on a network that also provides internet service to some other offices in the same building.
This computer is only about 2 months old, so these entries can't be too old.
When I looked at his computer, he was on his home network and all those other devices showed as Offline. I right clicked on them all and removed them. Would it be a good guess that perhaps the security of the network at his office was compromised, and those devices were connected to that network at some point?
I told him to monitor and see when they reappear, but he won't be back in that office for 2 weeks.
I have this problem were external hard drive do not show up on my PC.
First my I put my friends in and it did not work, then I went out and brought one myself (different brand) and it does not show up.
Windows automatically installed the drivers it said it even know what time of external it was. But now it doesn't appear in explorer. What should I do. It appears in the device manger list, but how do I access it?
I just installed Win 8 last night and everything seemed fine before I turned off the computer. Now, I'm a student and I work a lot from my USB/HD. I have both my usb and HD connected to the computer but the computer doesn't read them now.
I have a external drive that I used for backup with XP. What do I need to do to make it work with windows 8? How do I get win to recognize it? It is a IDE drive and is connected via USB.
My portable hard drive stops showing up all of a sudden. It is connected to a USB hub. When I go to 'Disk Management' in 'Computer Management', the hard drive shows up as Unknown - Not Initialised. Also this hard drive works while not using the USB hub, and the USB hub works as well with other devices.
Is there a way I can back up my files from my 2tb WD My Passport External Hard Drive? I have a lot of files on there which I want to back up and convert to NTFS.
I have Windows 8.1 x64, I have a 1TB drive attached on USB 3.0 port, the disk has four partitions, two are not allocated, I am trying to extend the volume on one of the active partitions, a Healthy, Primary partition but I get a message "The operation you selected will turn the selected disk(s) to Dynamic disk(s).
I'm not sure what it means but how do I get the extended volume to be a Basic volume?
Seagate 2TB drive mounted in a Thermaltake, Max 5 enclosure. The drive does not show in Windows 8. Does show when running Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) but shows as "Unallocated" without a drive letter. If run the Seagate drive tools, it shows up as unallocated, with drive letter "C". But there is obviously already a drive "C".
Disk Management does not present a means by which to assign a drive letter
I'm unable to 'Safely remove' or 'Eject' external USB 3.0 drives (I have 2) on my Lenovo Thinkpad running Wndows 8.1 without having the computer claim that the drive needs to be scanned for errors when the drive is reconnected to the same laptop or attached to my desktop PC's.
When I connect the same drives to my desktop PC's USB3 ports I initially get the same "scan for errors" prompt. But any further attaching and removal of the same drives to either my Windows 7(64) and Vista (64) dsktop PCs's does not reproduce the same error and further safe removal and reconnecting to those 2 systems is error free.
When scanned for errors there has never been any errors discovered. The 2.5" drives (one Seagate the other WD) are in Vantec USB 3.0 external enclosures that use a '2x USB plugs' cable; one for data and one for power. My usual removal method is to click on the 'Windows Explorer Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media' icon on the Taskbar and select Eject for the drive and then wait until the 'Safe to remove' message pops up before removing the single cable attached to the external enclosure.
The USB Controllers are:
Intel(R) Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Coltroller - 1E26 Intel(R) Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Coltroller - 1E2D Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 0100 (Microsoft)
I unsuccessfully tried updating the Intel(R) Series/C216 Chipset controller to v9.4.0.126 but it's still at v9.3.0.1011.
If it's a USB 3.0 driver/firmware related, or a 'feature' of Windows 8.1?
I can live with the problem as I'm sure that the drive is not being removed while data is being written, and Indexing is disabled on external drives. But I prefer using a computer that does not exhibit these sort of problems.
I have a Simpletech Simpledrive External Hard drive. It works on my desktop running xp. When I connect to my Asus N56DP Laptop, I hear the binging and all. But I do not see it in my control panel. I can see it in the device manager. Not in Disc MAnagement. Is there something I can do to get it to install and be accessible? I have some race car pictures I would like to post to Facebook.
I updated to Windows 8.1 a couple of days ago on my desktop. Windows 8 was installed last June. I have a Seagate Free Agent GoFlex external drive connected to the computer for daily backups. Since upgrading to 8.1, this drive has been shutting itself off and then restarting at seeming random times. This event is accompanied by a soft buzz apparently coming from the desktop tower.
my external dvd drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting from both the front and rear USB ports of my PC. It appears in Device Manager for a second and then disappears. The drive is connected via a SATA/USB converter and plugged directly into an electrical socket.
I have an external harddrive on a USB2 port that I have been using for ages without problems. Yesterday it just stopped being accessible for no apparent reason. The machine "sees" it (as the F drive) but can't access it. If I try to double click on the F drive the machine takes aaaaaages (green "busy bar" slowly tracking) and then I eventually get an error that says "F: is not accessible" - as per this image:
So I assumed the drive had died. But to test that, I plugged it into my g/f's old XP machine and it accessed the drive with no problems whatsoever!
The only other thing I could think to try was to look in disc management. But even though the is an F drive showing in explorer (as per the above image)... it doesn't even show up in disc management!
So, in exasperation, I did a "refresh" of my system. A bit of a drastic step, but I thought maybe it was time for a cleanup anyway. But, after the refresh was done... STILL the same problem! Exactly as per the above images, the machine "sees" the F drive but nothing is accessible.
I am connecting a 640GB Samsung G2 Portable External Hard Drive to my HP Pavilion 15 Laptop.
The external hard drive works on other desktop and laptop computers here at work, but when connected to the HP Pavilion (Windows 8.1 OS) it shows up as a Local Disk (H: but when trying to Open the drive it says:
"Location Not Available H: is not accessible The device is not ready."
I'm currently using a Dell Inspiron 3520 laptop with Windows 8 on it. I have an external hard drive from a Windows 7 desktop. It recognizes the external hdd right away and I can access it but I can't figure out how to boot Windows 7 as the primary. I've tried changing boot order in bios but I've had no luck as it still boots Windows 8 first. Is there a way to use the Windows 7 as the primary drive ? Even a way to temporarly turn off the Windows 8 hard drive will work. I just need to access the Windows 7 hard drive without having to navigate through program files to have to open something.
I have question: Could I use my external hard drive (removed from it's casing obviously) and replace my internal hard drive with it?
Here's more context: I recently bought a Kingston V300 120GB SSD to replace my old HDD in my laptop and give it a boost. Performance is noticeably faster (the fresh install of Win 8.1 might have worked too) but the 120GB are filling up quite fast however.
As I was running my defrag program to check if any external drives needed defragging I was surprised to see that my 1TB USB 3.0 Toshiba Stor.E Basics showed up as an SSD along with my Kingston (and thus no need to defrag ). So I asked myself, could I use that drive as my internal drive instead of the Kingston?
My questions are:
- Will it work? - If yes, does it need to be configured in any way first? - Would there be compatibility issues? My laptop is SATA 2 and I guess the drive in the Toshiba would be SATA 3. - Would read/write speeds maybe be too slow to run the computer properly?
Purchased a new plug and play 2 TB external hard that is not showing up as an icon in My Computer in Windows 8. It shows up in Devices and appears to be working properly. Driver is up to date. When I go to Disk Management the external is also recognized there but when I right click on the partition window to assign the external HD a drive path letter the drop down menu selection required to do so is greyed out and I am unable to perform the function. Uninstalled the USB driver for the device and re-installed and still nothing. I assume that when I activated Windows 8 on this new laptop I running as an administrator. Checked the unit out on my old laptop which is running Windows 7 and the same problem occurred. Perplexed.
I have a USB hard drive which has two partitions: 1 x 100GB partition formatted as FAT32 1 x 900GB partition formatted as NTFS
(these sizes aren't perfectly correct, but it's a 1TB drive that's split in 1:9 proportions)
On my Windows 7 laptop, both partitions are visible in My Computer, and I can read/write with no problems. (On the same laptop, an Ubuntu install can also see and use them perfectly)
On my new Windows 8 laptop, the 100GB FAT32 patition appears under My Computer normally, but the 900GB NTFS partition does not. If I go to Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management, I can see the partition. It has no drive letter or file system listed, reports as "healthy, primary partition" and shows 100% free space. If I right click on the drive's entry in the list, my only options are "delete partition"; everything else is greyed out.
So, to summarise: One hard drive with two partitions. Both partitions work perfectly in Win 7 and Ubuntu. Win 8 can only see the FAT32 partition, and treats the NTFS partition as if it is junk.
way to persuade Windows 8 to mount this partition? I know that the drive and partition are fine, but for some reason Windows 8 isn't interested.
I have an Acer laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed. It has an USB3 socket. When I plug an external drive into it the drive appears in the device manager but not in "my computer".
I have been experiencing problems trying to back up to external hard drive this week and keep getting an I/O Error with various error messages including 0x8007045D My Hard Drive is "G" and I can see it through my computer no problem and I also have my ITunes library on it and the ITunes music is working fine.
I am getting a message in Action Centre saying my Back Up did not complete successfully and then I have the option of Try to Run Again or change back up settings. If I select Try to Run again windows cannot find the disk or network location and if I change settings "G" does not appear. It seems Back Up has detected an error on my "G" which is preventing it from running the back up.
Also in Disk Management I am prompted to initialise a disc before logical disc manager can access it so I select MBR and I get I/O device error and disk 1/G is unknown/not initialised.I have tried powering the external drive off/on and also disconnecting it from the computer but no difference and at present I cannot save anything to the external hard drive. There is a previous back up already on the hard drive but this is not accessible at present.clearing this error so I can back up again without loosing what is stored on the hard drive in particular my ITunes library.
I recently purchased a WD 1TB external portable hard drive.When I first got it it was immediately recognised by my laptop (a 2 day old Asus Ultrabook S400C). This is my first time with Windows 8 so I am still learning to navigate it.
The first thing I did was transfer 650gb of movies and music across. I didn't format the hard drive first, maybe that was my first mistake. My files were still recognisable on my laptop and my WD TV Live media centre. The next day all of a sudden my media player wouldn't recognise it and when I plugged it back into my laptop it also cannot see it.
The device can be seen in device manager (when I click on properties it says it's working corectly), but not in the drives list in my computer. It is showing as "Disc 2" 'Not Iniitialised' and when I click on 'Initialise' and choose 'MBR' and hit OK it comes up with this error msg: 'The request could not be performed due to an I/O device error'.
i accidentally dropped my hard drive its a 1tb buffalo hd-pntu3,,now when i go to disk management in my computer its showing up as disk 1 unknown allocated,,and when i try to initialize disk its greyed out!,,i have a lot of files on this drive
I have Samsung Laptop with Windows 8 installed. I have 2 partitions 200 GB and the rest whole drive as C drive which after recovery drive amounts to be around 700 GB. Yesterday, I tried Samsung Recovery to get a factory image of C drive. Firstly recovery failed twice and then the third attempt worked almost fine. Recovery said boot file was corrupted and it recovered. But when I opened my computer I had two drives, 60 GB and 200GB. The rest of the space wasnt there. I checked in disc management, Partitions map said C drive had 700 GB. But in the description it shows only 60 GB. The other partition 200 GB is intact. I tried doing samsung recovery again and again but the problem persists.
