External Hard Drive issues. Please help.

Published on June 18, 2008 By CharlesCS In Personal Computing

Hey all,

I have an HP Pavillion Laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium, fairly new. I like reinstalling Windows every so often on my PCs, it's nice to have a fresh install of the OS and software and I enjoy learning new stuff in the process. With my new laptop I simply need to restore to factory settings and install my software. But now I have a small but annoying issue and was hoping someone here could shed some light on it.

I have a WD 500 GB hard drive from my old PC that I turned into an external. From time to time the system does not recognize it but a simple shut down and restart of the drive fixes that. But now my issue is worse. I just did a restore this weekend and ever since I am forced to shut down and restart the drive every time I reboot the laptop. I never had to do that before, except when it didnt feel like seeing it (every once in a while, not often). Am not sure how to fix this so that the laptop will see the drive every time it reboots. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thank you.

Comments

CharlesCS

on Jun 18, 2008

Please anyone. And ideas or advise would be greatly appreciated.

ALMonty

on Jun 18, 2008

When you did a restore did you unplug the harddrive before you did the restore? I have a HP laptop and I had a simular problem with my 4gig thumb drive. Try unplugging the hd from the usb and plug it back in again or go to your system tray and chose "Safely Remove Hardware" and select the hd wait for the ok unplug it from usb and plug it back in again.

Mistralok1

on Jun 18, 2008

That would be my advise as well- to uninstall and then re-install the drive. I had something very similar happen to my second hard drive, and this cleared it up. WD has a nice little tool for checking the health of it's drives. I forget the name at the moment (at work), but you can find it on their site.

CharlesCS

on Jun 19, 2008

Thanks guys/girls. I did disconnect it and reconnect it but did not try the system tray program. Hopefully it will work cause I find it very annoying. Will post results.

yrag

on Jun 19, 2008

I like reinstalling Windows every so often on my PCs, it's nice to have a fresh install of the OS

That's been waste of time (particularly on an OEM- it's akin to refilling the garbage can) since XP was released and it reverts your MBR to it's original settings...thus, no external.

I'm assuming you're connecting this drive via USB (which means speed isn't an issue). That said, any type connection will involve the same procedure.

Un-plug drive, re-boot and when it's back up, plug in external. Vista will install drivers and prompt a re-boot. When it's back up and recognized, right click drive in Device Manager and set Policy for 'Quick Removal'....your drive is now a hot-swap and can be plugged or un-plugged whenever you want w/o using the 'Remove' icon.

If you really like that 'fresh install' feel (and who doesn't), get a good backup program and you won't ever have to do this again. Your computer and your life span will thank you for it.

cplair

on Jun 19, 2008

Thanks guys/girls. I did disconnect it and reconnect it but did not try the system tray program. Hopefully it will work cause I find it very annoying. Will post results.

Make sure you have USB 2.0 drivers from the manufacturer installed after you clean. It should work even on IDE to USB cradled drives! And since the drive is acting intermittently, check your USB cable and possibly replace it or the cradle.

Good Luck!

Cp

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