XP doesn't see External HD in My Computer

Question

My XP Professional with SP 3 is not recognizing External HDD using USB cable. I already have two HDD in my computer. One drive has two partition (C: and D:) and Other HDD is F: drive. E: drive is allocated for the DVD Drive. Now when i try to add another external drive. It does not recognize it. I tried to play with Disk Management but no luck. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Does XP show you the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray?

If Windows detects the USB drive properly, it should show up in both the Disk Manager and the system tray. If it shows up in both places but not in My Computer, you'd need to use Disk Manager or the mountvol command to assign a drive letter or mount point.

Since it's not showing up in the Disk Manager, you're probably not seeing the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon either. That means either the system USB bus hasn't informed Windows of the new device, or Windows wasn't able to auto-load a driver for it (although generally the latter at least shows you an error message).

Try:

• Making sure any external power is connected and turned on (does the drive have any LEDs that aren't lighting up?)

• Connecting the drive directly to the USB port (remove any USB hubs or extension cables)

• Plugging the drive into different USB ports (ports can fail)

• Making sure the drive works on a different computer

If none of these help, check your Event Viewer for USB-related errors and your Device Manager for disabled devices. Edit your question and include anything you might find.

Answer 2

As Quack said, make sure the device works on another computer, or another OS.

Maybe it's like my Windows Mobile device and needs a special program to use it.

The file system should be FAT32 or NTFS, and for older XPs the partitions should be max 128 GB.