[dito]

About a year ago I bought an I-omega HDD 80gig USB 2.0 external harddrive for my music and photo files.
It worked no problems, maybe file transfers were not as fast as I would have liked (might have been the computer's fault?) but overall it got the job done.

Two weeks ago I bought a new HP pavilion lapttop with 100 gig harddrive and my troubles began. I brought the new compy home & plugged the HD usb in, it made the noise like it usually does and in the lower right the "safely remove" icon came up but the drive did not show in my computer.
I restarted.
When it was restarting it went to a blue disk check screen, this still happens about half the time.

My main problems are: Unable to get information off the hard drive, i'll drag a folder over to my computer and after awhile it will say unable to read source. When I first got it working I tried to drag the entire 50gig my music folder onto my lapttop, after an hour of moving this error appeared. I thought I might have been foolish to move such a large folder at once and tried to do it in smaller units but still no dice.

I am unable to use the laptop burner to write cds of information on the harddrive.

I added the music on the external HD to my itunes library. Keeping the music on the external HD and listening to it through the laptop wasn't a problem on the last computer, on this one it is. The music will start and stop and there is a several second lag from when I click a song and when it starts.

and sometimes an error message will come up saying that a mp3 file is corrupted and i should run a chkdsk utility. I also noticed that some of the folders with music in them have been altered. where it used to be a folder with several large folders contained it is now an unknown file of 32k.

I checked on Iomegas website, they are pretty useless. They say that XP is built with all the drivers that you'll need and therefore they have no support to provide. So I am hoping that this forum can help me out.

thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

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Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. External usb hard drives are pretty much plug and play with Windows XP. The best procedure to use in connecting these is to boot up your computer, then connect the USB cable to the computer while the external HD is TURNED OFF. Then turn on the external hd. The computer should detect it, probably run "auto play" and also display the "safely remove" icon in the system tray. You should be able to see the device as a readable/writeable drive in windows explorer, and it should show up under disk management (start, my computer, right click manage, disk management). If this does not happen, something is wrong, either with the computer or the external hd. Does the external hd still work ok on your old computer? Are you just having the troulbe on your new HP? I suspect the Iomega drive is an off the shelf unit, and if it was working ok on your old computer, it should work on the hp. I have four such devices, although mine are self configured with the hd of my choice, placed inside an external enclosure of my choice, not "off the shelf". All work well on three separate computers, two running XP professional and one running W2K professional.

Do other usb devices work ok on your new HP?

[austin_o]

Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. External usb hard drives are pretty much plug and play with Windows XP. The best procedure to use in connecting these is to boot up your computer, then connect the USB cable to the computer while the external HD is TURNED OFF. Then turn on the external hd. The computer should detect it, probably run "auto play" and also display the "safely remove" icon in the system tray. You should be able to see the device as a readable/writeable drive in windows explorer, and it should show up under disk management (start, my computer, right click manage, disk management). If this does not happen, something is wrong, either with the computer or the external hd. Does the external hd still work ok on your old computer? Are you just having the troulbe on your new HP? I suspect the Iomega drive is an off the shelf unit, and if it was working ok on your old computer, it should work on the hp. I have four such devices, although mine are self configured with the hd of my choice, placed inside an external enclosure of my choice, not "off the shelf". All work well on three separate computers, two running XP professional and one running W2K professional.

Do other usb devices work ok on your new HP?

[dito]

Hello and thanks for your reply.
Before I gave the old computer away it was working no problem with the exHD.
I did as you suggested and brought up "computer management" by right clicking on my computer.

Another problem I found is when I go to management, and look under properties then tools I am unable to do either of the tasks there (error checking and defragmenting)
the error just says is unable to perform the task.
I've run spyware programs (adaware and search and destroy) nothing comes back.

[austin_o]

Ok, still have these questions from my first post: You should be able to see the device as a readable/writeable drive in windows explorer, and it should show up under disk management (start, my computer, right click manage, disk management). If this does not happen, something is wrong, either with the computer or the external hd; Do other usb devices work ok on your new HP?

[dito]

i've used other USB peripherals on my new computer and they work fine.
the harddrive shows up under disk management.

[austin_o]

Ok, it shows up in disk management but you can't defrag or check it for errors from the tools menu. If you click on the hardware tab, does it say "the device is working properly"? Check the security, sharing and quota tabs as well. Should probably be "share this folder" and maximum allowed in sharing; check secuity and validate users permissions, everything should be checked allow except "special permissions"; and quota box should NOT be checked.

[dito]

Under the hardware tab: the device is working properly.

When I click the Sharing and Security tab it says "To share this folder with other users of this computer only, drag it to the Shared Documents folder." there is another paragraph that says if I want to make this folder and its sudfolders pricate I should select the following box. But the box is not selected and appears as though it is not able to be selected.