Hard drive showing in device manager but not in Explorer

phatboyheavy · January 23rd, 2005, 02:10 PM

Hello folks,

I've an external La Cie 80GB drive I use only for backing up my internal Maxtor (80GB). tried to back up today for first time in about 5 months, the external drive has been stored in a box in a cool place for that time. The La Cie isn't showing in 'My Computer' as it normally does. I can see it in Device Manager where it's named: WDC W800BB-22HEA1 USB device. In explorer it is normally just called 'La Cie', with whatever letter it's been allocated. Device Manager says it is working properly and that it is using the best driver available (tried to update).
It also shows as an external mass storage device in the dialogue box you use for safely disconnecting external storage.
I'm backing up using Paragon Hard Disc Manager 6. It shows in this software, but only to 'Copy' and not to 'Back up' to. It is named as hard drive 1. When I copy it seems to work, but then when I use the Paragon partition browser it shows as having no files on it, though I can hear the hard drive working. It's backing up about 13 Gigs of data and takes about 5 - 10 mins. The light on the front of the drive does not flicker at this point (though I'm not sure if it ever did!)
I've tried restarting/turning on off/changing USB port, but am stuck at what to try next.
I only upgraded from version 5.5 to 6 of Hard Disc Manager today, thogh I can't see how that would have any effect.
I'm using XP Home

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help,
Graeme

sechs · January 24th, 2005, 08:33 PM

Have you checked the disk and its format?

Your USB interface appears to be fine, so I'd suspect that it's something with the drive.

BipolarBill · January 25th, 2005, 09:59 PM

You need to look in Disk Management (DISKMGMT.MSC). Disk Management is well hidden. The easiest way to get to it and other consoles is to right-click My Computer and select "Manage".

Here, you can import a drive, partition, format and reletter it.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/disk_management.htm

__________________

phatboyheavy · January 26th, 2005, 03:10 AM

This is weird - When I've got the Disk management window open and switch on the external drive, I get two new partitions pop up just before my internal 'C' drive. They read as:
Partition/Basic/NTFS/Healthy(active)/1.95GB/475MB and
Partition/Basic/NTFS/Healthy/11.88GB/6.56GB

I haven't formatted this drive except that I tried to back up a partitioned drive to it and it should read as 80GB anyway.

I'll try the advice mentioned above, in the mean time, if anyone can shed any light on this that'd be great.

Thanks folks

Graeme

phatboyheavy · January 26th, 2005, 02:27 PM

reformatted drive and assigned letter which solved the problem... Until I tried to 'copy disk' using Paragon Hard Disk Manager again. It seems to turn the external disk into an unlettered partition of my main drive - prior to formatting I deleted the partitions mentioned above, which I then realised seemed to be part of my main drive (thought I'd messed up), but after formatting and then 'copying' again, they've re-appeared, at the same time the disk has disappeared from 'Explorer' again. I'm going to reformat again and try a back up rather than a copy. If the problem persists I may re-post this on the 'applications' forum as it may be the software - I probably just don't understand it. Will post conclusion

Thanks again,

Graeme

phatboyheavy · January 26th, 2005, 05:19 PM

Re-formatted and did a regular back up image rather than a 'copy' which is supposed to duplicate your hard drive exactly. Worked fine. As far as I can tell I wasn't misusing the software, and I have just upgraded to version 6, so maybe it's a bug, or maybe it's just me.

Am going to e-mail Paragon, see what they have to say.

Thanks for the advice.

Graeme

minduka · October 12th, 2007, 01:47 AM

hi

I am having the same problems. USB works fine and the hard drive shows under the device manager and the task bar. It also shows under disk management but it says the partition is not allocated. Do I have to make a new partition? Will it delete all the data?

BipolarBill · October 12th, 2007, 06:20 AM

Actually, yes. Where was the drive used before?

minduka · October 14th, 2007, 12:44 PM

What do you mean by 'where is was used before'?

BipolarBill · October 14th, 2007, 01:12 PM

I'm assuming that this drive was used in another PC or enclosure. If I'm wrong, I apologize, but you didn't provide a lot of information.

It's quite possible that the drive has gone bad and has lost the partition table. Does this drive get bounced around a lot?