Enrique Gonzalez Lohmann asks:
A month ago, my HP Pavillion stop recognizing my two external hard disks that work fine (I´ve tried them ok with other PCs). There are no letters shown in Windows Explorer.
However, my computer does acknowledge all my memory sticks (pen drives), even my Sony Walkman, the wireless MS mouse, and other USB-based units hooked to my PC.
I have no clue whatsoever what is going on. Any ideas how to fix this problem?
Browser: Chrome 19
System: Windows 7 Ultimate
Tagged: detect hard drive, external hard drive, hardware issue, hp, usb port
System: Windows 7 Ultimate
Tagged: detect hard drive, external hard drive, hardware issue, hp, usb port
4 Answers -
Bruce Epper
June 15, 2012Attach the drives (one at a time) to your PC and give it a couple of minutes to get things sorted out. Open up Disk Manager (Start -> type: diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter). Scan through the bottom window of the Disk Management Console looking for any allocated drives that have a status of ‘Offline’. Right-click on the disk in the basic information box where it has the Offline status noted and select ‘Online’ from the context menu. In about 2 seconds or so, the drive should come online and be accessible again.
Oron
June 15, 2012Three most likely scenarios:
1. USB Mass Storage drivers have become corrupt (check device manager to see if hardware is listed, and if it is but shown as “faulty” or “unknown”, this is fairly likely). You can try to resolve this by using System Restore to roll back to a point before the problem started.
2. USB sockets aren’t providing enough power (try plugging drives into different sockets, you may get lucky).
3. Faulty USB controllers (unlikely that ALL USB controllers on the motherboard would go faulty at the same time, but I have seen this happen twice, so not impossible!).
Harshil Sharma
June 15, 2012try this:
1) Connect your external hard disc.
2) Right clink on My Computer and click on Manage.
3) Then click on ‘Disc Management’ in left pane.
4) You’ll see a list of disc drives connected to your computer in bottom of the window, you’ll see all the partitions in the first line, scrool downl to see if your externel disc is visible here, if yes, then right click and select ‘Add Letter’ and proceed as asked,
Post the results
ryandigweed0
June 15, 2012Connect your external hard disk device, is there any pop up notification? Open the disk manager, through the way Suggested by Bruce, see if there you see any red or yellow marking near the USB? Device, listed at the bottom.
Also, maybe your system is having trouble powering up the external disk, how many cables does your external drive have?, because sometimes external disks come with two usb cables, one for power, and the other for data. Maybe your mothherboard is weak of the laptop, and can’t provide enough of power to spin up the external disk?
You could also install some free partition manager, and check if your device is being shown on your computer. Sometimes it may not show in my computer, but shows an extra drive the partition software. usually because sometimes the hard drive may get corrupted or something.
Also when you use your external drives, please use “remove usb device” method before unplugging your device.
Connect your drives to other PC’s and run a diskchheck or error scan, because sometimes if they have some errors due to abrupt disconnection etc, they act a bit moody when connecting it to other systems