[RESOLVED] USB external drive(s) not showing up

I was planning to move some files around and archive my system backups to 1 of my USB Eternal Drives.
I have 2 USB External HDDs and had them both plugged in and working fine, before I started doing anything, I accidently unplugged the power on one of the USB drives and a Delayed-Write Error message came up and told me the folder it encountered the problem on. (Now, I haven't done any activity on this PC in at least 2 days, so I don't know why I would get a delayed write now).
I plugged the power back in for the drive, but couldn't access it.
So I turned the PC off and rebooted.
When it came back up, neither drive was appearing in My Computer.
I tried un-plugging and plugging them back into the usb port. I heard a windows clunk-clunk sound (like a new usb device was added) but I still can't find either of the drives in My Computer.

suggestions?

What may have happened is that both drives are trying to share the same drive letter. In this case, you see neither. To fix this:
Plug in ONE of the two drives. Leave the other off then -
1. Go to Control Panel
2. Click on Administrative Tools
3. Click on Computer Management
4. Click on Disk Management
5. With ONE drive plugged in and ON you should see the drive listed as a disk. Right click it.
6. Click on Change Drive Letter and Paths
7. Click Change
8. Click on the down arrow and Select an available drive letter, say F, G or any available.
9. Press OK twice.
10. Close Computer Management and Control Panel.
The drive should correctly show in Windows Explorer. Now when you plug in the second drive, it should automatically find a different letter, usually E if you leave it available.
You must have administrator privileges to complete this process.
J.

well, something got seriously hosed in this process.

I tried your suggestion, plugging in 1 drive at a time and going into Disk management.

the USB drive that was unplugged from the power, shows as "USB Device not recognized"
so I unplugged that drive and plugged the other drive in....
"drive unknown - Not Initialized - Unallocated"

I have critical data on these and I don't believe the data is corrupted (yet). I think it's just an allocation table or such.

Any other suggestions? I also tried plugging them into my other PC and it didn't recognize them either.

When I plugged the drive into another PC, the message came up in the bottom right-hand part of the screen:
"Found New Hardware: Unknown Device"

then it said "USB Device not Recognized"

but no new drive appeared in My Computer.


thanks! please help!

MPTech :)

I have not tried this myself, but it is recommended by people I trust.

Have a read and see what you think. Is it you?

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...-computer.html

Other than that I think you are looking at all the file recovery programs

Restoration
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
does not require installation and can also run from a Floppy disk.

Pandora Recovery http://www.pandorarecovery.com/

Undelete Plus http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5301.html


Elaine

I have 2 very good file / data recovery programs I bought a couple years ago (Active File Restore and Active Partition Recovery).

My problem at the moment is that I can't even see the drives. They are not appearing in My Computer or Disk Management.

Open the enclosures, remove the hdds and jump them into a PC.

Fact is, you may just need new enclosures.

More Wierdness................

I brought 1 of the 2 HDDs into my work this morning and plugged it into my PC, it works perfectly! I don't get it! It wouldn't work in either of my home PCs last night. :confused:

Train, I thought about trying that last nite. I think I'll take your advice and attempt it tonite.

Humm, now I now it has been dropped, ok only a inch or so, but if that fixed it for home also, NEW enclosure time for sure.

Yes, a slight drop has fixed things like that before.

I'm having the same problem, but I'm on a MAC OS X, iBook G4. I was moving files over to store on my External Drive (WD MyBook, USB 2.0), but accidentally pulled-out the USB cord. When I plugged it back in, the MyBook icon was not appearing on my desktop. After trying several times, plus restarting my computer, it's just not appearing anywhere. Any suggestions?? Please help! Thanks.

When you unplug a drive during data transfer it may corrupt the existing data on the drive. Probably this is what happened. Dunedin has listed some data recovery programs above that you may want to try, but they are all Windows programs and you are working with a Mac. Otherwise, you will have to reformat the drive to be able to use it and all data stored on it will be lost.
J.

Train, they weren't dropped, they were both plugged in and working the previous day. I don't know why the second one quit working (it was the first one i un-plugged, but they both quit working). I took the second one to work and it started working. When I plugged it in at home, it worked again (yea!) I de-cased the first one (pulled the "cable-select" jumper) and installed it as an IDE drive and it worked perfectly. So both drives are working again.
:D
Wish I could tell you exactly what fixed them, but i don't know. I'm going to try putting it back in the External USB Case and see if it still works.


dunedin & jseidel, thanks for the suggestions, but it wasn't a data recovery issue, I couldn't see the drives at all!

This one can be marked as "Solved"! Thanks guys!

Believe it or not I have been able to save stuff off of hdds by dropping them about 2 inches.
What broke lose, or how, I have no idea. The trick worked. :confused:

I marked it for you.