External H/D

[sctrt]

I need assistance please....

My maxtor external drive was working GREAT - then it was moved to another PC and it now comes up on a LOCAL DISK H and says it needs to be formatterd.

I do not want to lose all my data - it was not on a H drive before I initially moved it to another pc and then put it back.

It came up witha blue icon before and now it don't ????

What can I DO or need to do?

Steve

[bwcc]

Sounds like you may be running into some difficulty with different operating systems that the PC's are using. Can you provide:

- what OS the original system is running (including SP)
- what OS the new system is running (including SP)
- what is the file system on the external drive (fat, ntfs, etc)?

[sctrt]

We are talking about two pc. A new one that I built which had the external h/d on it and is now broken, so I switched the h/d to the second pc. I have switched this h/d before and it worked. Both systems have xp pro and sp2. I orignally set everything to ntfs, so it should still be ntfs shouldnt it?

Thanks

Steve

[bwcc]

Reading Maxtor's site, they are mentioning a program called 'retrospect'?

Is there any software that this device came with?

[sctrt]

BWCC

I blew it this time. First off after settling down I find that it is a Western Digital not a maxtor. In w/ds setup info it says the h/d is preformatted as one FAT32 partition and is now ready to use. Like I said we have used this h/d on both pcs. Upon trying to install xp earlier I noticed that one h/d was FAT32 and everything else was NTFS. But it has been working.

Still looking for something I am missing.

Thanks

Steve

[bwcc]

The only item I found on WD was an issue with an adaptec USB card/chip. However, you mentioned that this drive worked on this pc before - so that rules that problem out.

The drive is FAT32 from the manufacturer. That would rule out compression and encryption issues.

The drive showing up as 'H:' is not an issue as Windows 2K/XP will assign a new drive the next available drive letter in the system. This can be changed in the Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management.

The problem is that Windows is not seeing the file allocation table of the drive - thusly prompting you to format. With an external device, it can be related to how the drive was initialized (or plugged in).

I would stop the device, shutdown the system (but leave it plugged in) and reboot - see if it handles it differently. Does the device require a seperate powersource? Is the device USB or firewire? Does the drive casing come apart and allow you to swap drives? I guess while you're answering those questions, go ahead and post the model of the drive - it may help.

[sctrt]

BWCC

External h/d uses a separate power source.

The device is usb.

Sealed casing with fancy red lights.

Western Digital Model WD2500B007-RNN 250GB

I shut every thing down.
Powered up pc then h/d ,nothing.
Shut every thing down .
powered up h/d then pc.
Searched for new hardware, found it and is asking me to formated h/d.

What now? Thanks.

Steve

[sr71000]

start, contorl panel, administrative tools, computer management, storage, disk management) Now, take a screen shot so we can see what's up. then have it hosted over at something like www.photobucket.com and then we can check out what it looks like . help us see what's going on!!

[sctrt]

Excellent, something new. How do I take a screen shot of disk management?

Thanks

Steve

[bwcc]

- Open the window you want to take a screen shot of
- Hit the PrtScn button on your keyboard
- Open your image editor (Imaging is included with Windows)
- Create a new image file
- Edit - Paste

This will copy the image that was stored in memory (when you hit PrtScn).

- Save file

Or, use your image editor (PSP, Photoshop, etc) and use the capture features included with it (Imaging does not include a screen-capture feature).

[sctrt]

BWCC

Thanks a million, didn't know you could do this. Got priorities to attend to will get back to this ASAP.

Steve

[sctrt]

BWCC...

I got it ! [ Big Grin ]

It's in photobucket - but ~ NOW how the heck do I put it on here ?

Thanks "AGAIN" Steve

[large_nostril]

When you upload it to Photobucket, they have a list of ways to link to the file you just uploaded. One of them use the [IMG] tag. Select it and copy and paste it here.

[sctrt]

BWCC ~ boy I hope this works - let me know if I DONE IT - LOL

THANKS A million for you RAPID REPLY ! "Steve"

[sctrt]

well darn... i see the image in my last post - but how the heck do we zoom it to a bigger size to "SEE" ?

Did I goof something up? " Steve"