I turned the PC off to reboot when I though I was going into safe mode and went into regular mode instead. Now, it thinks one of my external drives is the C drive. On boot, I am getting a message that it cannot recognize find the system 32 windows config file (I'm paraphrasing).
I used the repair utility to get to the C prompt (which is pointed at the external drive) and checked the drive letters. I don't think the PC bios knows the hard drive is there.
I tried going into setup and reverting to factory installed configuration and that didn't change anything. I could not get it to recognize the hard drive.
I have just reinstalled XP Pro. I have a SATA hard drive and have to install drivers during install. I didn't install the drivers this time assuming they would still be in the system. Ever since XP thinks the hard drive is a removable drive. I tried reinstalling again but nothing.
I have a Dell computer where one of the loading .dll files came up 'missing' one day, so it won't boot. I want to get all the photos and other docs off the hard drive. I had downloaded one version of linux and was able to see the files on the internal hard drive, but was unable to copy them to a memory stick or external hard drive. Now I've downloaded ubuntu and booted off a memory stick... this time, it's telling me that the internal hard drive has all kinds of bad sectors and won't let me access any of the files on there.
I'm connecting a 30GB Travelstar Hard Drive via an external USB 2.0 case to my Thinkpad T40 with Windows XP (pro). Windows immediately recognized it. However, the hard drive does not show up under Windows Explorer. I can go into Device Manager, click on Disk Drives, and it does show the new drive there (along with my main hard drive, which is a 80 GB hard drive).
I cannot figure out how to make it show up in Windows Explorer with an Drive Letter assigned to it and thus, how to actually use it.
My USB External Hard Drive suddenly decided to stop working monday before last, it is weird, like it will turn on and all, but it doesnt get recognized and while its on none of my programs will load like Ventrilo and games(ventrillo will half load but not all the way) and the computer wont shutdown while its on. but the moment i turn it off they all start running smoothly agian and the computer will shutdown immediatly (if i am at the shutdown screen). Any idea why/how this happened and how to fix it?
I want to back up my entire system to an external harddrive and then reinstall windows on the internal one.My question is can I use a program to put programs back on to the internal drive from the external harddrive. I heard ghost copies everything even registry is this true?
Running Windows XP home, well-protected from viruses and spyware with all the usual recommended programs. I have a 160G external firewire hard drive, NTFS system. Cannot access data all of a sudden, I am getting an error message, "file system corrupt and unreadable." In disk management, the drive is listed as healthy, 160G, but no NTFS listed. What could have caused this, and is there a way to retrieve the data? Are there any low-cost or freeware programs to do this, or is it inevitable to spend a "fortune?"
I am on the road and trying to do a system restore. I use an external hard drive in my office but I do not have the external hard drive with me now. I can not get the restore to complete and I can not get the undo to fully complete. Is this not working fully because I am not hooked up to my external hard drive? When I initiated the restore it asked something about the external hard drive.
I've connected an external USB drive, but when I go to My Computer it shows it as a network drive. In addition, it gives it the same name as the mapped network drive that already exists there. When I change the name of the external drive there, it then changes the name of the mapped network drive, so again they both have the same name, although the drive letters are different. Any ideas how to make the external drive appear where it belongs in My Computer, under Hard Disk drives?
An external hard drive. When it is on & I try to boot,I get the following error : Invalid system disk Replace the disk, and then press any key I then have to turn off the external & press any key to get it to boot. Is there a way that I can boot with that external turned on. Some setting I need to change perhaps? I have an E-Machines computer about 2 years old.
I am cloning my existing hard drive in my laptop (sata) to an external hard drive (pata) in preparation for installing a new larger hard drive (sata)in the laptop. Can I, or how do I transfer the cloned data from the external (pata) to the new internal hard drive (sata)? Thanks in advance and I apoligize if this is a rudimentary question as this is my first time attempting something like this.
I have a usb external hard drive. Can I install windows os on this drive and use it.I am told that windows must be installed only on main hard drive 9i.e. drive 0).
Recently, my motherboard fired, but the Hard drive was uneffected. Since i had a lot of info on the hard drive i tryed to find people who could take the info off the hard drive for me. I then had this great idea of just putting my hard drive into a "Hard Drive Enclosure Kit". Well, i did that and it worked great. But theres one problem, I can't seem to get into the Owner folder of the hard drive, for evey time i do, it brings up.
I just recently purchased a 100 Gb laptop hard drive together with an outer case and a USB cable. I just wanted to upgrade my laptop's hard disk, by first making an image of my current drive into my new one through the outer casing. The thing is when I connect it to my laptop, windows cannot detect it. Whats wrong with it? Is there anything I have to do?
My problem is that I am trying to use a 60 GB ATA / 133 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Internal Hard Drive as an External Drive as a Slave and I am having trouble getting my bios to recognize it.The Hard Drive is hooked up in the same way as an Internal SATA DVD burner setup as an External DVD Burner that is running on Windows Office XP 2003 and it works fine. So what suggestion would you give me so that I maybe able to get the bios to recognize this drive?
Found some very useful info on here so decided to sign up and post a recent problem i encountered with an external hard drive. the hard drive has a capacity of 80GB and came from another pc. there was a 25/55 partition already on it from the old pc. i tried to delete the partition that was 25gb. now i can't find that 25gb at all. when i plug it in to the usb slot i can only see the 55gb partition it used to appear as 2 hard drives in my computer and nothing else. when i use disc management to format it i only see 55gb.
To anyone that might be able to help... I've had this external hard drive for a long time and I haven't been able to access it to store lots of music and videos on. My computer sees that it is there, but like I had said earlier, I can't use it. It won't let me see it unless I go to Device Manager. My computer is getting old on me and it's been places most labtops shouldn't have gone... Once in Purgatory, and now, it's on Hell's surface. I get the safely remove hardware icon down by my clock, but I don't want to remove it, I want to use it. I want it to show up in my drives so I can instantly see how much space I have left and what not... I went through the Troubleshooter, tried every possible way that I can think of, the ways the troubleshooter.
I have a Sony VAIO desktop running Windows XP. I purchased a Comstar 160MB External USB2 Hard-Drive and installed it. Since Windows XP is supposed to have the drivers that are necessary, no driver disk was included, and none was needed.The problem developed when my Windows XP began to give me problems later. I had to re-install Windows XP. I did that, and I downloaded all Windows XP up dates (including Service Pack 2). Now, this Windows installation does not install the external hard-drive. Windows recognizes that there is "a USB2 device," but Windows states that there are no drivers and asks me to furnish them.
I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my Win XP machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried to allocate the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my Win98 machines), FAT32 was not an option, until I reduced the partition size to 20 GB. I'm using XP's Disk Management. Is there a maximum limitation of FAT32 partition size?
I got a usb external hard drive 650gb where in it couldn't resist in the docs as it says it should be powered down unless in use. In this case how can i get back to the service pack.
I have a file folder that is 247 MB on XP that I'm trying to copy to my external Passport Hard drive. I've been able to copy all files to the external except this one, but every time I try it elicits an Error Copying File or Folder ie. "Cannot Copy File". What's up with that?
I copied my data files to my external Maxtor hard disk before I tried to reformat my internal hard drive and reload Win XP. However during my partition, I didn't realize I still had the external drive (160GB) plugged in and it showed up at the top of the list and the original internal (80GB) below it. So, I followed the instruction mistakenly and went through the process of deleting the partition(on the external hard drive) and tried to partition it into two drives. Then I got an error message as I continue to try to format the hard drive "Your computer's startup program cannot gain access to the disk containing the partition or free free space you choose . Set up cannot install Window XP on this hard disk." I stopped, reboot and tried to go through the delete partition several times with the same error message. After several attempts, I realized that the external hard drive was still plugged in.
So I unplugged the external hard drive and reboot to go through the process of reformatting and partition the internal hard drive into C drive and E drive and loaded Win XP. Now even though I plugged in the hard.After I installed the external hard drive's software,driver and restarted the computer, I connected the external hard drive and don't see the drive in my computer. I could find it under Control Panel/System/Device Manager/Disk drives but it doesn't show up as an external hard drive under "My computer" with a drive letter. Under the disk management, I see the drive as Disk1 but it was unallocated. Did I lose all my data due to the delete of partition? Can I recover my data and drive ?
I am really annoyed cause I can't delete most of the files on my external hard drive, nor can I format it. I tried using this program that has always successfully deleted files off of my C and F drives. It seems there is no way to delete these files.
both my externals are perfectly fine....they work on my other computer. Originally when i plugged them into my laptop the Found New Hardware wizard would startup, but be unable to do anything.
I am backing up data to an external USB hard drive. What should I backup? I don't have enough room to backup my whole hard drive onto the external. I'm looking for suggestions of specific folders ie. Documents and Settings, etc. as opposed to advice like "whatever can't be downloaded or replaced easily".
I bought a DELL labtop Inspiron 5052 over two years ago. It got XP Home version. A couple of weeks ago, a cup of coffee was spilled on my laptop. I took it to a computer shop. They contacted Dell and tried to order the labtop motherboard but to no avail as Dell has discontinued manufacturing this type. The warranty is only 1 year. So I decided to use it for spare parts. What 's an expensive cup of coffee ($3500.00). After removing the hard drive (60Gb) from the labtop, I made it as an external USB type hard drive. It was a perfect solution as at least I can save the data. But the fun was a short one as I now experience something to do with 'file access'. Connecting the external hard drive to my PC, I can see all the files and folders on it. The problem is on my Dell laptop I have 2 users setup under Document and Setting. One of the user logon (userA) enforces password while the the other (userB) enfoces no password for logging on. I can open files from userB with no problem but can not open files or folders from userA. It says "Access denied" or "file inaccessible". Is there a way to overcome this ?
I just bought a Hitachi Deskstar 160 gb external hard drive to back up my system hard drive on my pc. I tried using the copy & paste commands from explorer, but the ext hard drive wouldn't allow this. What do I need to do to get this done?
My external USB hard drives always used to show up in either My Computer, or Windows Explorer's double pane view in Windows XP. Although they still show in My Computer, they do not show up in Windows Explorer anymore, unless I select them in My Computer First - and then choose the "Folders" selection. do Not give me the standard answers which are for External drives that don't show up Anywhere .. because the drives DO show up in Disk Management, and they DO show up in My Computer, and this is Not a new drive that needs to be formatted.
I just bought me a new SATA 250GB Hard Drive and a external hard drive enclosure. I received the items today and I just realize the hard drive enclosure doesn't build into the way to connect to the SATA 7-pin data connector. All it has is the Parallel ATA 40-pin data connector. Can anyone recommend any external hard drive enclosure that can connect to SATA connector directly. And there is a main reason why I choose a SATA hard drive.
