PC doesnt detect external hard drive

[Soulcal]

I have an external hard drive, and when i plug it in, the safely remove hardware icon pops up, but the drive is nowhere to be seen. I've tried going to computer management to find it, and it's there but it has no letter assigned to it, (C:,D:, etc..). But it's there. Plus in safely remove hardware it lists it as Mass Storage Device? but this isn't on my computer either, and it says it's working fine. Which t's not.

I need help

[sheepondrugs]

funny you should ask that. I have recently had the same problem.

I ended up going into device managment and assigning it a drive letter. Rebooted and it showed up ok.

[Soulcal]

How do you assign a drive letter though?

[sheepondrugs]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

I assume all Windows Versions will be roughly the same setup, heres one for xp.

How to assign a drive letter
To assign a drive letter to a drive, a partition, or a volume, follow these steps:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.

Note If you do not see Performance and Maintenance, go to step 3. Performance and Maintenance appears in Control Panel only if you use Category view. If you use Classic view, Performance and Maintenance does not appear.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, and then either accept the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use.
7. Click OK.

The drive letter is assigned to the drive, to the partition, or to the volume that you specified, and then that drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.

[Soulcal]

I tried this, and it doesn't appear to work. When you right click it, the only options are *Delete Partition* and the *Help* option.

I can't really delete because the drive is not mine and so I don't really have a clue what to do and tbh there doesn't seem to be much I can do.

Thanks for your help though, and oh yeah :D epic name.

[plodr]

The next two obvious questions are: what version with service pack of windows are you running and what is the size of the external hard drive?

Do you know how the external drive is formatted? It could be it is not formatted for a computer running windows.

[Soulcal]

Ah, I've realized why it doesn't seem to connect to my computer. When I was lent the hdd my friend didn't think it'd be important to mention that it's formatted to mac. That's the reason why it acts weird on my pc.