 | Member with 8,286 posts. | | Join Date: Apr 2000 Location: Birmingham, Alabama USA Experience: 15 years of just doing it | |
The only way I know to diagnose a problem like this is experimentation. Without anything to experiment with, I am a little lost. If this is a laptop that the drive isn't working with, that is just more evidence in favor of the possibility the laptop isn't supplying the full one-half amp on each USB port.
I haven't tested it myself; but, rumor is that many laptops are designed to supply one-half amp to be divided among all ports instead of the one-half amp per port required by the specification. If that is the case with yours, you are a victim of just another violation of the standard set by the international standards group that sets those specifications. I don't remember the name of that group; but, you get the idea. In other words some manufacturers cheat. Further, according to the rumor, the smaller, more compact and lighter the laptop, the more frequent and egregious the violation.
Back to your problem: Sorry, I just don't know how to test this thing except by connecting it to a couple of good desktop computers.
Digression/Rant:
As an example: Seagate recently had a successful class-action suit against them and had to make a settlement in the millions (a drop in the bucket to Seagate) for lying about the capacity of their hard disks for twenty+ years.
Some years back, Dell was caught violating the ATX specifications by swapping some wires on the motherboard's power terminals which would cause a loud bag, smoke and the loss of a power supply and a motherboard if one connected a non-Dell board to a Dell power supply or visa-versa. This was an abuse and egregious violation customers' trust designed to punish those who bought non-Dell replacement parts. Yet Dell still insisted their boards and power supplies adhered to the ATX standard.
Dell stopped the practice only when publicity went world-wide and to a level that even hit some major newspapers. Isn't it odd how people/companies learn how to 'do the right thing' when their pocketbooks are threatened.
All of the above was prepared hours ago; but, I forgot to press the submit button before leaving for service calls.
Perhaps you need to go into Disk Management and prepare the disk--Start> Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Computer Management> Disk Management. If you use a hub to boost power and free up USB ports, you will need a powered hub, one with its own external power source. |
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Windows can't detect external Hard Drive 
sh*t for brains! 
