External Hard Drive Does Not Show up as a Hard Drive on my Computer?

Question

Today i purchased a verbatim 120gb external hard drive. I plugged it in through the usb in my computer and nothing shows up excecpt for the remove hardware safely button on my toolbar. How can i make my computer recognize this hard drive as an actual one

Answer 1

try going to start, than my computer and see if it says removable disk. If it does click on it and that should bring you to it. :)

Answer 2

I am actually having the same problem. I bought an external case with and a 2.5" internal drive and it shows the same thing. Nothing in my computer just that it does recognize the device. It probably needs to be formatted to register but what is the best way to do that?

Answer 3

I am currently working through that same problem. I plugged my external HD in through usb and it didnt show up. I went to command prompt and typed "f:" and that had nothing so i typed "g:" next and I got an error saying there is a "data error cyclic redundancy check" which obviously means my external HD is on g: but is malfunctioning and I have a bigger problem then i thought. Go into command prompt and type in g: and hit enter then f: and hit enter. if those two dont bring up some kind of information to  let you know what might be happening then try other letters like "d:"    "e:"    or "h:" as long as they  are not already letters assigned to your cd/dvd drive, first or second internal HD, or other items currently hooked up. GL

Answer 4

The new disk isn't partitioned and formatted yet.  You have to go to Disk management... it's in different places depending on what version of Windows you have.   Admin Services in Vista in Control Panel, or right click on My Computer in XP and chose Manage.  

Easy way?  do a search in the help screens.  It should show as disk1.. your original hard drive shows as disk 0.

Use the menus to allocate the disk space on the drive and then format it.

Answer 5

If that button is there it should have recognised the device.

Go to  My Computer.

You should see it there under 'Devices with Removable Storage' and a drive letter.

Also try to right click on any folder and it should show up as one of the 'Send To' options.

Regards, Zyfert