Inaccessible External Drive

[aazaad]

I have formatted an external disk drive with NTFS on my desktop. After copying a set of file on it I connected this drive to my Laptop but it does not appear in My Computer. The green light is on all time it also does not appear in Disk Management. On the hardware installation it shows an error. My both systems are with Windows XP. Can anybody help?

[johnny.rotton]

You may need to assign the drive a letter on your Laptop.

How to assign a drive letter
To assign a drive letter to a drive, a partition, or a volume, follow these steps:
1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.

Note If you do not see Performance and Maintenance, go to step 3. Performance and Maintenance appears in Control Panel only if you use Category view. If you use Classic view, Performance and Maintenance does not appear.

3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, and then either accept the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use.
7. Click OK.

Hopefully this should help. please comment if you succeed or fail. JR

[leofelix]

Hi welcome,
please go to start>run and type "compmgmt.msc /s" (without brackets).

Tell me if now you are able to view your external hard disk,
thank you

[edit] ops sorry, johnny.rotton was faster and more accurate than me

[johnny.rotton]

@ Leo its only cause I had a call about the same problem and had the info on one of my screens.

[iMav]

I have formatted an external disk drive with NTFS on my desktop. After copying a set of file on it I connected this drive to my Laptop but it does not appear in My Computer. The green light is on all time it also does not appear in Disk Management. On the hardware installation it shows an error. My both systems are with Windows XP. Can anybody help?

There are 3 possible reasons:

1. The partition tables are messed up.
2. The HDD is not getting enough power.
3. Drive Letter missing (solution provided above.)

The second one can be rectified by connecting to other USB ports. If you have a desktop try connecting the drive to the USB ports at the back.

For the first one you'll need to download a tool like - Partition Table Doc Fix the tables and the drive should work just fine.

Keep us updated

[aazaad]

It appear to be a problem of missing MBR as Partition Table Doc does not detect this drive
It also can not be detected by Desktop powered USB ports

[leofelix]

It appear to be a problem of missing MBR as Partition Table Doc does not detect this drive
It also can not be detected by Desktop powered USB ports

Please read here

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP