My Computer won't recognize external HD

Solved/Closed
Al - Dec 29, 2008 at 09:09 PM
 twinstaiye - May 7, 2013 at 07:40 AM
Hello,

I recently purchased a 1TB Seagate Freeagent and not soon after I transferred several hundred gigs to it the top heavy case fell over, snapping the usb connection off of the board. I removed the SATA HD from the case and installed it into a Rosewell 3.5" HD enclosure with ease.

When I plugged it into my computer the icon on the bottom of my vista toolbar which is the seagate "device manager" flashed that 'no drive is connected.' I didn't get the typical usb with a green check icon where you can safely disable hardware until the unit had been plugged in for about 10 minutes. I thought I was home free, but 'My Computer' doesn't have the drive listed.

The device manager shows the drive as ST310003 40AS USB device. I attempted to update the driver, but it said the necessary driver was already installed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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12 responses

Cleaning your registry using any software, and the latest Vista update, somehow removes any drive management settings on usb drives and stops letters being assigned to previously Plug'n'Play drives.

Semi Remedy

Connect the drive but do not Format the drive, right click 'my computer' then 'manage' go to 'storage/disk management' view the drives; your usb drive will not be allocated a drive letter. You can set one manually or leave it for about 2~5 minutes for one to be allocated auto. Each time you connect the drive you may have to do this.

It must be caused by a setting being disabled from an update or change in the registry. If anyone can find what setting has changed please reply so we can all modify this pointless bug.
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