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I Can't Access My External Hard drive


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#1
LabbyGal

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Okay, Here goes...

I have a external hard drive (160 GB Fantom, I've heard good things about them) and its been working fine for week. i bought it because i have about 15gigs of media and it was slowing down my laptop. I tranferred all of my music files to it and and tested it for a few days and then i deleted the original files from my laptop. well yesterday afternoon i had my computer on and the hard drive hooked up everything was fine. i had to goto work so i set my laptop to hibernate and left the hard drive on. i came home five hours later turned off the hard drive and disconnected it unplugged my laptop and packed it up for transport, i went to another dwelling (it was a very gentle ride to the location). i then set up everything according to procedure and turned on the hard drive and laptop. the laptop for some reason can't reboot out of the hibernation correctly, no big deal it does that from time to time. i try again, no luck, so i just boot it up from scratch. so when i my laptop is all ready to go i can't access my external hard drive. it is detected and is functioning properly according to my device manager. i have restarted many times, disabled and enabled the device, uninstalled the drivers (plug and play) and they reinstalled themselves, and even a system recovery i tried it on two other computers one laptop with windows xp home and a desktop with xp professional, the drive installed itself on both but i have the same result as i did with my own. AAAAHHHH this is killing me. My data is very important to me. PLEASE HELP PLEASE.
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#2
austin_o

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Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. I take it this is a sealed, off the shelf external hd, not one you assembled yourself with hd and enclosure? Have you checked the manufacturer's web site (faq or tech support) to see if this is a known issue for which they have fix? I would start there. If the device shows as "working properly", do you get any kind of error message when you try to access the drive. If you go to my computer, left click does the drive show up there? How about if you go to my computer, right click manage and disk management, does it show up there?
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#3
LabbyGal

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I have checked the manufacturer's website and their troubleshooting and faq is very limited to the point where it doesn't help. i tried to contact them but...yeah that hasn't worked out yet. i don't get an error message because i don't have a way to access it. it does not appear in my computer and it does not appear under manage--> disk management -->storage. please help, thanks
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#4
LabbyGal

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oh yeah, it is a standard off the shelf, i didn't put this together
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#5
Tyger

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What make and model is it? Without that information we're pretty much shooting in the dark.
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#6
LabbyGal

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It is a Fantom Drives Titanium External USB 2.0 Disk Drive 160 GB a bit of info can be found at FantomDrives dot com
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#7
austin_o

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Ok, its USB2 and off the shelf, it was working before and you didn't change anything. What happens if you have your laptop booted up, plug in the usb connection at the computer, then power up the external HD? Does the "found new hardware" wizard detect it? Does the "safely remove hardware" icon appear in the system tray?
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#8
LabbyGal

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following those steps, i won't get the wizard to pop up but it does make the sound that i just plugged something in and it does appear in the tray icon to safely remove hardware as a usb mass storage device. thank you all for your help so far.
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#9
austin_o

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Ok, if you double click the "safely remove hardware" icon, it opens up and lists USB mass storage device, below that it should show the drive. If you select properties, does it say "device is working properly"? Can you view the driver tab and try one of the options there? Pick one, maybe update first, and if that doesn't help, roll back, and if that doesn't help, delete it and start over. If you delete and start over, remove the usb connection, power the drive down. Then re-connect to the computer, power up the drive and new hardware wizard should reinstall it automatically.
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#10
LabbyGal

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okay, i did as you said, there wasn't a driver to roll back on and there wasn't a new one available so i did the uninstall, i restarted the computer then plugged the drive in then powered it on, it reinstalled itself with the same result. any other ideas, thanks again
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#11
austin_o

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The new hardware wizard installed it, and you see the safely remove hardware icon in the tray again, but not able to see the hd? Does the external HD have a power on indicator light? Can you hear the hd spinning? How long have you had it? Is it under warranty? If it is, I would contact the manufacture and file a claim before doing much more. They may have a fix that lets you recover your data.

I have 4 USB external hard drives, all of which I assembled myself with the enclosure and hd of my choice. They all work well. I have swapped out hard drives several times. The only time I ever had trouble was when I had a jumper set wrong.

There are some articles at M$ which may help
http://support.micro...rnal hard drive
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#12
LabbyGal

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Okay, will do, thank you so much for your help.
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#13
InaDon

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OK!! I hope you haven't sent it back yet but if u did then I hope you have a working replacement. The only question is what about yo data? Thats more important than the drive right?

Try this if you haven't yet. Connect the drive.
Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management (or just right click My Computer on Desktop and select Manage).
Select Storage and Disk Management and check the status there.
Right click on the drive and enable it if it has some funky status.

I once had a similar situation but I can't remember the details. I've learnt that if I switch of my PC with the drive on and then I switch it on again and it behaves funny, before it completes the start up I just cause it to hibernate again and then on the second restart I connect the drive. Once it loads I dont try and access the disk. I just disconnect it and then reconnect it. It works with no problems...

I hope that this will lead you in the right direction although I dont have the full details. :tazz:
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#14
2ndMOUSE02

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I'm having exactly the same problem with a western digital 320GB drive. Im a musician and all my data is on it. I can see it in disk management but cant access it.
I hope we both get it sorted , cos its killing me too. i just finished a new album and if i cant access the data , it will be lost and i'll have to start a new album completely from scratch.
Godd luck friend -- you're not alone !
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