Posted: 7/1/2008 7:40:35 PM EDT
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I have the WD My Book External HD that I was using with my HP laptop yesterday, but today when I plug it in it doesn't appear under connected "Hard Disk Drives" in My Computer like it did before. I've had this problem on my desktop and was able to fix it by going into Computer Management and assigning it a drive location, but this laptop has Vista and I'm lost. Anybody know where to find help? |
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First of all, thank you for replying and trying to help. I'm trying all that you have suggested but this is Vista and the only options after right clicking My Computer and selecting Manage are some little drop down menus on the left. One of the options is Disk Management, but under that heading the External HD is not visible. However, if I select Device Manager it lists a bunch of things like Batteries, Computer, Disk Drives. Under Disk Drives it has a sub menu with the name of my Internal HD and the name of my WD My Book USB Device, but I can't do anything with it except look at its properties. |
Neither refreshing or rescanning work. I found where I can change Drive Letter and Paths, which is how I fixed this on my desktop, but it doesn't show my external HD so I can't assign a different letter. |
I don't know which one I plugged into last time. I just tried "safely removing" it each time and plugging into each of the four available ports. I think the problem is this - on all the paperwork that came with the external HD it says it is assigned to Drive letter (E), but last night I watched a DVD for the first time since purchasing this system (the laptop and HD are less than 3 weeks old) and on My Computer it says the DVD drive is assigned to (E). Should I change the DVD drive to another letter? |
Vista should give your external drive a new letter, but it wouldn't hurt to try that. |
All right. I'll try that before reassigning a new letter to anything. Be back in a bit. Thanks again. |
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It works now! But it makes no sense...it worked fine yesterday, and all I did today was restart the system. When it powered up I inserted the USB cord - nothing. I did the "safely remove hardware" and tried again - still nothing. Again - still nothing. I figured, "What the heck. I'll give it one more shot before I get really annoyed." This time it worked. ...Strange. Thanks again for taking the time to walk me through some of this. If there's anything I can do for either of you let me know (I'm an FFL holder if you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket and need a deal on something). |