Hello Welcome to the Ten Forums! The common problem is simply a drive not being seen at first when either replugged back in or moved to a new host machine until it is initialized in the Disk Management tool. This has been a common cause since XP days for any new drive external and even for adding in a new internal drive as well. In most cases with an external enclosure and drive in it to be known to be good the quick and easy solution is a fast trip into the Disk Management tool itself to find the volume on the drive that should be seen as an unknown and right click on that to select the Change drive letter option and select a letter not already in use. J or K make for a good pair since flash drives and other internal drive like you dvd and storage drives will grab up the D, E, F, G, H, letters on the spot depending on how many there are. Here two permanent storage/backup drives see S and T used instead while another drive in a fan cooled usb/eSata type enclosure will see either J presently or K.

That has 'K'(c)onfidential type files stored there like online orders. If the volume isn't found right away when scrolling the window there you can go up to the menu bar>Action tab and select the Rescan Disks option to refresh the list of partitions/drives.

BlacX 2.5'/3.5' SATA Hard Drive USB Docking Station.

If the size of the partition on the external drive is larger then the C drive then spotting it becomes a simple task. When and if the rescan is needed and the partition does appear you can simply scroll further down the Action tab's menu for the All tasks and use the Change drive letter option there or right click on the volume directly to see a drive letter assigned which will then see the 'File Explorer' no longer Windows Explorer icon on the main task bar suddenly appear and start flashing. Your av program will also prompt to scan the new drive found as well. You say the power went out while updating, was this the primary drive (C drive/system drive) in your PC, and now you're hoping to fix it? I highly doubt that the drive has failed, your volumes/partitions are probably fine but corrupt. Was a driver installed when you plugged in the external drive? Did you try using different USB cables?

Cables can vary in quality from cheap to excellent. Did you try different USB ports? Does the external case need its' own AC power source, or is it fully powered via the USB cable?

If it needs external power, be sure to provide it. I would also try downloading a small Linux distro (like Parted Magic), install it to a USB stick, then plug the drive in there to see if it's recognized. You don't need alot of experience to do this, even if you know nothing about Linux. Be sure to pick a user-friendly distro. It could also be that your USB ports have issues.

I have a particular external HDD that is very finicky and frequently disconnects while copying files. Using different cables/ports helps a bit, but not much. The drive works fine on a friend's desktop, so it's probably just something with my hardware or whatever. If you ever get it to come up, be sure to run a checkdisk (chkdsk) command to find/fix any errors.

Not sure what else I can say that might help, good luck! Anon Vendetta and Night Hawk, Thank you for your help. I ordered the adapter cable online for a 3.5 hard drive, they sent me one for a 2.5 laptop hard drive. My mistake for not checking the label on the bag when I picked it up in the store. I just reordered another one.

Hope they send the correct one try his time. Again, thank you for your timeThe 2.5' and 3.5' SATA drives use the same type data and power cables, it's the PATA drives that are different. When a 2.5' drive is removed from a Notebook/Laptop there are adapters or portable cases one can get that can allow plugging into USB port, I use them frequently when working on various computers. There also are adapters or cases that can use an eSATA port.

The 2.5' and 3.5' SATA drives use the same type data and power cables, it's the PATA drives that are different. When a 2.5' drive is removed from a Notebook/Laptop there are adapters or portable cases one can get that can allow plugging into USB port, I use them frequently when working on various computers. There also are adapters or cases that can use an eSATA port.Not all 2.5' drives use the power cable typically seen with a 3.5' while the 15pin data cable remains the same.

With laptop drives those slide into a pin shaped connector having an opening at the end of the drive while the 3.5' see that end exposed until either is place in an enclosure. Some also see the IDE type molex 4 pin power plug as well as depending on which make and model enclosure or docking station you go with being another option. I was looking at both earlier to consider which to go with while mostly the 2.5' only picked out will be for a laptop running on the usb port rather then the usb/eSata Sata I II III IDE combiniation and running up a nice price tag of $175 with one seeing a cabinet of drawers! Of course others will run much much higher like over $5,000! How about one for nearly $20,000!!! In contrast however you can find one for home use running about $20-$50 depending on who makes it that will be dependable and not simply cheap garbage when it gets a good review! For example Thermaltake as a brand seems to always see a good rep and a combination USB 2.0/eSata docking station can be found for a good price.

That vendor even carries 5.25/3.5' enclosures! I'm little skeptical about that one from first look here! When running a quick search lately for a fan cooled enclosure since the Acomdata only saw a couple of vents on that I ran a Sabrent USB2.0/eSata model I grabbed at Amazon which unfortunately is for 3.5' only Sata II+III while the other I have was 2. Mankiw Instructor Manual Nickels. 0 only for both IDE and Sata II + III. The product page for that can be seen at That brand also carries a combination converter not only for 2.5 and 3.5 but also for SSD and even 5.25' drives. The problem is I tend to get skeptical on the quality factor when you see too much bunched together over having something specific for each.

Even with the fan added in however that new enclosure gets warm to the touch when simply left running for any good period of time. That was one of the early drawbacks seen with the self contained external drives by the way where the drives would end running hot and fail on people! Those were mainly usb or usb/1394 firewire however since the eSata enclosures and adapters were later to come.

Wiz Khalifa Songs on this page. Similar Threads Thread Forum Hi Mates! I'm trying to change the name of my External Hard Drive as it appears as Local Disk G on my laptop. However, upon trying multiple times it keeps on coming back as Local Disk G. Thanks and have a nice day!!! Drivers and Hardware Hope this is in the right place. In the past few days my external hard drive makes the sound (windows notification) like when I unplug it from my desktop.

Then about 5 seconds later I get another sound and notification asking me how I would like. Drivers and Hardware Pen Drive and external hard drive keep getting errors! So I select to fix the problem scandrive recommended scan and repair. But there's never anything wrong with them it reports! And it takes ages to scan it takes 10-15 minutes for 32GB pen drive. Drivers and Hardware I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and post that It was working fine without any issues.

I have two external drive connected to it. 1 TB Iomega powered drive. 2TB seagate external drive. The 1tb drive suddenly became RAW and I. Drivers and Hardware Hi, I have version 10130 which I installed as an ISO file via my dvd drive,this was after Windows update failed on several occassions to upgrade it from 10074. The problem that I have is that my Seagate 750gb External Hard Drive is not accessible. Drivers and Hardware.

On Windows XP I've seen external drives try to take a letter that is already in use by another drive, possibly even one that isn't even hooked up at the time (don't recall for sure). I've never seen this issue on Windows 7, but it may still be possible. To check, do the following: Open Disk Management (Start >>Run >>diskmgmt.msc) See if you can find the Blacx listed in there.

If so, right-click it and go to 'Change drive letter and paths' Assign it a letter that isn't in use. Hope this help.

Too late -- but for future reference, when it asks if you want to convert to a dynamic or GPT volume you do NOT want to do either. It's much more compatible to simply leave it as a basic volume. Just initialize the disk -- nothing more.

To recover from that (if you want), run Western Digital's Data Lifeguard utility; select that drive (be SURE you've selected the correct drive); and then run the Write Zeroes function on the drive. Selecting a full erase.

This will take a few hours. But when it's done, the next time you look at the drive with Disk Management it will ask you to initialize it again -- this time don't check any of the conversion choices. Another question: Is this by any chance an EARS series drive? The advanced format on these drives is not well tolerated by XP. Install a jumper on pins 7&8 BEFORE you zero it and re-initialize it -- this forces the sector alignment to be compatible with XP.