80gb IDE Drive

Hi, I am having a problem in my pc recognising my external HDD (western digital 80gb IDE), I plug in the usb cable, the drive boots up but then that is it, there is no sign of it in "my computer" but it does give me the option to remove it in safely remove hardware, device manager also recognises it, my mates pc has no problems in picking it up and he is also running vista ultimate 32 bit. Is there any solution to this problem? :confused

I am not looking to recover data, only to use the drive.

 

Is it a brand new drive?

Has it been formatted? If not, go to Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Com Mgr\Storage\Disk Mgr, format it as FAT32.

 

If this USB HDD is powered by the USB port (there is no power adapter plugged into the HDD; it is only connected to the USB port) then the problem is that the USB port isn't supplying the proper power required by the HDD.
This often happens if either:
1. The USB port is a USB 1.0 rather than a USB 2.0 (unlikely if your are running Vista)
or
2. You have connected the HDD to a USB Hub that is not powered and/or has other devices plugged into the hub as well. (Each device that is plugged into the hub is drawing its power from the same USB port)

The solution:
Make certain that the HDD is plugged into a USB port directly on the computer, not into a hub.

 

I have tried both of these methods and neither works,

Akhilles method: the drive shows up on device manager but not on disk manager. Therefore a format is not possible.

Joelsz method: I am using a Gigabyte 6-Quad X48-DQ6 motherboard which should be more than capable of powering the external HDD via USB 2.0 I have no hubs and have unplugged every thing from the usb ports and used a double ended usb cable, still no joy.

You guys have been helpful in searching for the solution, have you got any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

Have you rescanned for disks? (Under "Action" tab in disk manager)

In XP, there is a registry fix for this problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925196/en-us
but there doesn't appear to be one in Vista

 

If none of above helps, I'm afraid you have to either return the disk to the store or if the warranty/return expires, you can open the enclosure up, remove the harddisk, plug it in your mobo with an IDE cable, boot up Vista, partition & format this disk as FAT32, shut down, put it back in the enclosure, and try it out with USB cable.