Why wont my computer recognize my external hard drive?

Question

I'm running vista and recently purchased an external hard drive case from Sabrent. I plug it in and the drive spins, but when I connect it to my computer it doesn't get recognized.

Answer 1

There has been tons of problems with drivers and Vista. Go to Sabrent's website to look for updated drivers. I don't have any experience with this particular brand of external hard drive, but I'll bet that's part of the problem.

Answer 2

A lot of times the problem is related to drive letter mapping. Most cases have mapped network drives in use when experiencing this type of error. What seems to work the most is accessing the ADMINISTRATOR TOOLS from the CONTROL PANEL (or atleast in XP it was there). We are looking for COMPUTER MANAGEMENT followed by DISK MANAGER.

From there you will see your hard drives in terms of numbers rather than drive letters. Your external drive is usually on the end of the chain. Right click on it and select CHANGE DRIVE LETTER. Change it to X: (I like X because see the x and think, it could be unplugged and I'd have and "X" on it. Select any drive letter you wish  but aim in the upper 10-26 alphabet (USA) as the lower 10 are usually reserved for internal hard drives, floppies, cd's and removable media such as flash drives and Flash cards.

Answer 3

-unplug and plug again

-try diff usb port

-can you plug in other usb devices in the ports?

-check that you have latest drivers for chipset and usb ports

-turn off comp and plug it in while it boots

Answer 4

Hi,

Did your hard drive come with an installation CD? If so you could try using it, it not you could try to plug your hard drive into your computer before you connect it to the power source. If this does not work try rebooting the computer. The last thing that could help may only apply to Windows XP but you could try your best to use these instructions, first open control panel. In Windows XP there is an option in the upper left hand corner of the window that says "switch toclassicc view" or "switch tocategoryy view", you want to be in theclassicc view once inclassicc view find "administrative tools", in administrative tools find "computermanagementt".  In the computer management window ,on the left side, go to storage\disk managment. It will probably say connecting to the local disk managment service, you will have to wait for it (it shouldn't take more then a minute). In the bottom half of the screen your new hard drive should be listed, if it is not I do not know what else to try, but if it is listed right click on it and select "change drive letter and paths" In the window tha that opens click "add", choose the letter that you want.

I hope that you get it to work!

Answer 5

i assume you have a hard drive connected to the hd-case right? i'm not trying to sound stupid but seriously check your connections again.  make sure the sata cable and power adapter are connected properly and securely.  

Answer 6

Try to plug your Hard Drive in the back USB ports of your computer. It's much better to plug it in the back because it's directly connected to the motherboard.