[DoubleHelix]

See what shows up run you run this program.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html

It seems highly unlikely that the drives wouldn't appear anywhere and wouldn't even be recognized as connected devices. I'd seriously suspect some kind of hardware problem with the USB ports on the Windows 7 desktop. Is this a brand new computer? If not, how old? Did you try connecting them to all the USB ports?

[bobbycow36]

Hi again,
sorry for the delay. I've been away for a couiple of days.
The machine is just over 2 years old.
It has 6 USB ports and I've tried all 3 drives in all 6 ports even though I realize that was overkill.
None of them worked for drives B & C but all can see drive A
The USB's work fine for keyboard/mouse/SD card converter etc
I don't understand what's difererent about drive A or what's lacking in the PC that it can't see the others.
Ran the software you sent - cool!
It shows ALL 3 drives as being connected!
It names the Seagate and the WD ones but labels the Fujitsu one only as Generic Mass Storage, but at least it sees it.
Kind of spooky that it can see stuff that is no longer connected though - like it leaves some spectral shadow.
Where might we go from here?

[DoubleHelix]

Good. Delete them in that program. Then connect the drives again.

[bobbycow36]

I'm having a little difficulty with that.
Do you mean uninstall? Or disable?
I'm a little reluctant to go with either right now because along with the three drives also highlighted are an SD card reader and most scarily my USB mouse.
I can't seem to find a way of keeping the drives highlighted and excepting the mouse If I go ahead anyway will the computer just recognize the mouse later on if I remove it and plug it back in?
I just recently had a problem with a keyboard that wouldn't talk to my pc so I'm playing careful!
Thanks

[DoubleHelix]

You highlight them in USBDeview, and uninstall them. You just uninstall the 2 external drives that don't show up.

[bobbycow36]

Sorry, I am probably being extremely dense here.
I have USBDeview open and it already had all 3 drives highlighted along with my camera card reader and my USB mouse.
If I uninstall now I will lose the additional items too - and I'm quite partial to my mouse.
I can't deselect any of the items - it says I have to find authorization and run as administrator. I can't find anywhere that says this.
As it stands the program won't let me change any of the highlighted items.
There must be something that I'm missing - can you help please?
Many thanks

[DoubleHelix]

Highlight them, right-click, click Uninstall. No, it won't affect your mouse or anything else.

[bobbycow36]

I uninstalled the drives as you said and all went smoothly. They showed as disconnected.
I reinstalled them and the USBDeview recognized the WD drive but failed to recognize the Fujitsu (which it calls generic)
Neither drive shows up under my computer
Devices and printers fails to show anything either BUT it does show an unknown device
There is no information about it though except that it is not working properly.
Device manager shows up 2 mass storage devices which are sprobably the WD and the Seagate
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling a couple of times with the same results.
There seems to be a bizarre pecking order.
The Seagate works at all levels and is fully visible.
The WD is visible only under device management and USBDeview but not functional
The Fujitsu is visible only under USBDeview but now not even showing as connected under that and not functional.
I'm trying to look for some kind of rational explanation here but it seems bizarre.
I look forward to your next suggestion
Many thanks.

[DoubleHelix]

Now uninstall them again. Then after you connect just one of the drivers, look for it in Disk Management. Assign it a drive letter if necessary. Then do the same with the other one.

[bobbycow36]

Ok After both drives removed physically and also from USBDeview, I reattached the Fujitsu drive.
It appeared under disk management as ‘System Reserved’ with no drive letter. Above it are the C drive and the E drive which is the Seagate drive
‘Simple Basic NTFS’ ‘Healthy (System Active,) Primary Partition’
However it does not appear at all in the lower part of the screen along with the other two drives. Neither does it appear in the My Computer screen. I have assigned it the drive letter J.
It has reappeared in the USBDeview screen as connected.
I tried the same with the second drive, only things got really weird. I left J plugged and added the WD drive, but only J showed up on disk management. Windows wouldn’t let me delete the J drive but I unplugged it and removed it from USBDeview. Still no good, and WD wasn’t showing up on the latter either which was strange. I just happened to look at My Computer and was surprised to find the J drive there, only it claims to be 99.9MB in size and half full, and yet if you click on properties it says it is empty. What happened to the rest of it? It’s 500GB in size!
Other devices like SD card reader show up fine. If it was a fault with the USB ports wouldn’t that affect the mouse/keyboard/SD card reader too? Is there something in the PC software that could be scrambling its ability to recognize memory? It seems otherwise stable and recalls documents etc along with photos no problem – so I guess it could just be external memory. I have no idea I’m just clutching at straws. What do you think?

[bobbycow36]

Hi
I have been away for a while and had kind of hoped some amazing solution might have appeared, like by magic. Are you still there?
My hard drives aren't, at least not on the Win 7 machine anyway.
But interestingly one of them disappeared for a while when it was plugged into the laptop. Didn't show up anywhere there either, like not in device management or anyplace else.
After attaching it, unattaching it, and then reattaching it several times it reappeared, so that I could see the contents. All looks safe from this angle.
However I decided to try making a copy of this 'wonky' HDD just to be safe (this is the Fujitsu drive, and plug in a brand new WD 1TB drive, which is recognized by the laptop. (I had tried it earlier on the Win 7 machine which also recognized it - progress I suppose.)
However as soon as I try to copy data from the Fujitsu to the second WD drive, the |Fujitsu disappears from the laptop screen and no transfer takes place. It's like the the drives are playing cat and mouse with me.
Is it likely the Fujitsu's HD is malfunctioning? If so what can I do with it?
If the drive is irrecoverable I have most of the data repeated elsewhere, but there is some I would like to salvage - would this be possible with something like Puppy Linux even if I can't 'see ' the drive?
Sorry this is getting so complicated!
However, even if a failing HD were the reason for the behaviour of the Fujitsu drive, the original WD drive is showing no signs of failing to account for it, and I would have thought the odds of getting 2 failing HD's in a row like that must be pretty astronomical, especially as they've not been subjected to trauma of any kind.
I am very grateful for your help.
Bobbycow