hard drive disappeared

Janice

Janice

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Janice
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My western digital hard drive will no longer function since i did a reinstall of windows xp.


The blue ring light on the front but when i connect it to the pc either by usb or firewire it doesnt appear as a drive in my computer... ive tried downloading drivers but it says to extract them to that drive..............GREAT as i cant see the drive!!!
it doesnt show when i plug it into my laptop either.

i dont actually mind losing the data on there... as long as i could get it working again.... could I reformat it without being able to right click a drive icon and say format?
 
try a different usb lead?
 
Have you tried 'disk management'. It may need to be initialised as it's been rebuilt. Do a search in windows help on disk manager and try that.
 
missed the 'or firewire' bit.

What does re installing XP have to do with the problem? this is a external backup drive yes?
 
are your usb and motherboard drivers installed?
 
Just to rule out a simple problem. Has XP assigned a drive letter to your drive that is different to how it was previously set up?

If not, disconnect the usb cable and reboot the drive. Reboot the computer and wait for it to fully boot up and settle down - then reconnect the drive.

and I'll think some more.....
 
missed the bit about trying it with your laptop - sorry.

External drives can be very fickle (they're female you know) especially WD drives and especially on XP.

I have one that keeps going walkabout on XP yet can always be seen on OS-X
 
Couple of things to consider:

1. Make sure you're using XP with service pack 2 or 3. It fixes a number of USB related issues. You can check the version of XP you have by placing the mouse cursor over the My Computer icon and clicking the right hand mouse button. Select Properties from the menu and a window appears showing the info.

2. If your drive accepts an external power source as well as USB try plugging it in. Sometimes they draw too much power for the USB port and they appear to "work" but don't show in windows. This is often accompanied by a "ticking" noise from the drive itself.

Failing that, try it in a friends computer, preferably a modern one. It would also help if you could post the exact model of drive you have.
 
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