My portable drive won't work on one PC but is fine on another

Hi

I run an old Hewlett-Packard PC which does not have Internet access, but can get the use of a PC that does. My OS is Windows XP, Service Pack 3.

I've just found that my Hitachi 320GB portable drive won't work on my own PC anymore (it makes a clicking sound - about 2 clicks per second - and it doesn't show up anywhere in Windows, not even Device Manager). On the other PC, though, it's fine.

I thought it might be a driver problem, but since this drive was 'plug and play' to the best of my recollection, I don't know if this is the case.

I've tried to do a drivers scan, but since I can't get the PC onto the Internet, I'm having no luck - the free driver scanner I've tried (Device Doctor) won't save its results so that I can transfer them to the Internet PC.

And I don't even know if this is a drivers problem anyway.

I'd be very grateful for any advice (try to put it simply, please, as I'm a bit of a beginner).

Thanks.

 

Clicking noise, the drive inside is going bad.

 

Normally true, but that does not explain his problem of the drive working fine (apparently without clicking) on one machine, but not another.

How does this portable drive connect to your computers? Are you sure XP is up to to SP3? I note large drive support (over 137Gb) was not added to XP until SP1. See here for more details.

 

Hi Digerati

As you say, the drive works fine on the other machine - no problems at all.

I connect the drive directly to the USB 2 socket of the PC using Hitachi's own lead. And I should emphasise that the drive was fine on this machine until a few days ago, so if it's to do with the OS, it must be some corruption that's suddenly occurred.

This PC has never had any upgrades done to XP since I bought it (secondhand) in early 2010. It was only on the Internet for a brief period while I've had it (via a dongle, which I couldn't afford to renew).

As I say, part of the problem with fixing this is the fact that I can't get the PC onto the Internet without buying some kind of Internet access, which I can't afford to do.

Any advice would be most welcome.

 

I don't know how else you can do without an Internet connection, other than downloading drivers to the machine you are using now, then copying them to a CD or floppy.

Have you tried a different pair of USB ports?

 

Yes, I've tried the USB1 port as well - same result.

 

Try this:

Right click on Computer > Manage > Disk Management. You should see the external drive listed. Right click on it and select Change Drive Letter and change it something way down the list - like X for eXternal and see what happens.