computers won't recognize an external HD

[matador_de_sa]

I just got an external enclosure for a hard drive I no longer have enough IDE controllers for. I have already used this hard drive for a long time so I know that it's working. I followed the instructions given by Azio (the manufacturer) exactly. My problem is that it shows up in device manager, but it is not a letter drive. In device manager it is under disk drives and it says the model of my drive and something like a2 USB. It says that the device is functioning, but it doesn't show up under anything except device manager. What do I need to do to get it working (I have some fairly important things on this hard drive). I have tried it on 2 different computers but they both have the same exact problem.

 

[evongugg]

Is the drive already partitioned and formatted?
If not you need to do that in control panel under administrative tools, computer management and disk management.
You can right click on the partition for the drive in disk management under administrative tools in the control panel and assign it a letter as long as it is partitioned and formatted.

 

[matador_de_sa]

It doesn't show up in disk management. I have been using this hard drive as an internal one for a while and it has some important stuff on it, I really hope I don't have to reformat.

 

[PCcashCow]

One avenue you can try is adding the drive back to the loan IDE channel you have on your mobo to extract your data. Or, verify if this drive was Dynamic or Basic when it was in your existing system. If you had the drive set to Dynamic and inserted the drive after a fresh install of XP, you would have to fool XP to looking at the drive as basic again to read the data.

If it is the case, this thread has worked for me and some others who had the same problem. And if this were the case, you would need to perform this while the drive was tethered via IDE not an external enclosure.

 

[evongugg]

Sounds to me that you have a bad enclosure. I would RMA it, unless you are exceeding the disk size the enclosure can handle.