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ND6000

2 Posts

15543

October 19th, 2005 16:00

Inspiron 6000 Doesn't Detect External Maxtor Drive!!

NEED HELP!!!!
 
I recently bought a Maxtor 250GB IDE/ATA drive and put it into an external Cintre ZDisc enclosure (AC self-powered). It makes the "dink" sound when I plug in the USB, but never shows as available. I installed the enclosure software and my Inspiron 6000 detects that there's a "mass storage" device because the "remove mass storage Icon" shows up on the bottom right corner. However, I CANNOT access the drive. It isn't showing up in "my computer" nor is it showing up when I tried to format it = Admin tools ---> Computer Management ---> Disk Management.
 
Even more frustrating is that I was able to get the drive to work on a friends Desktop who's also running Windows XP. We even formated the disk and then tried to plug into the Inspiron.... still, nothing showed up. Adding to the frustration..... I plugged it into a Compaq desktop here at work running Windows 2000 and it showed up just fine!!!
 
Is anyone else having this problem?? I'm positive it's not the hard drive / enclosure and I'm also quite sure it's not Windows XP because it worked on my buddies desktop..... thus, the only conclusion I can come up with is there's a problem with the Inspiron 6000's?? Is there a patch??? Any advise??
 
Someone please help!
 
Thanks.

try2help

132 Posts

October 19th, 2005 16:00

1) Make sure your HD enclosure is externally powered with its own ac adapter.

2) Plug it in and restart the i6000.

3) Launch Disk Management, right click on the external drive and create a new primary NTFS partition on the entire drive.

4) Quit and it should show up in My Computer. If it does, create a desktop shortcut so you can access it directly.

5) You won't be able to quick disconnect it unless you first close all windows on the external drive.

Message Edited by try2help on 10-19-2005 12:33 PM

ND6000

2 Posts

October 19th, 2005 23:00

That's just it, when I'm in Disk Management the external drive never shows up! All I see is the C: and the DVD/CD drives.

The external does have it's own AC power.

I'm lost!??!!?

pvwebb

41 Posts

October 28th, 2005 16:00

I’ve used an Apricorn 2.5” hard drive enclosure with IBM/Hitachi and Toshiba hard drives on a Inspiron 6000 without any problems. I’ve only tried it with external power. I’ve also used an Airlink 3.5” enclosure with a 200MB Maxtor hard drive as well as usb flash drives. On hard drives WinXP starts to read all the files on the hard drive before coming up with a decision window for how you want it to view the hard drive. This isn’t too bad for smaller flash cards. However, with a hard drive I always cancel and let the window go ahead and come up because it takes an extremely long time to go through an entire hard drive. Is there any chance your computer’s stuck reading the files and the window’s hidden? However, I would hope by this point the drive would show up in the disk manager. Have you used any other usb devices yet to verify the usb drivers are installed? Have you installed drives for usb devices that might interfere with recognizing an external hard drive?

sawaddi

611 Posts

November 16th, 2005 15:00

Do you have XP Power Tools or Toys installed? 

pvwebb

41 Posts

November 16th, 2005 16:00

I only have the Windows XP utilities that come preinstalled by Dell on the Inspiron 6000.

eaglemanusa

3 Posts

January 22nd, 2006 13:00

I dont know if you got it..  if not, what I did was right click on my computer, then go to manage, then click on disk management. it will show up in there and you have to right click on it to make it recognize it.  unfortunately on my 250gb, it will only read 128gb.  that is the problem I am having..

pvwebb

41 Posts

January 22nd, 2006 18:00

I'm detecting a 200GB Maxtor hard drive on my Inspiron 6000. If you only see 128GB, that sounds like the USB/IDE controller on the enclosure isn't ATA 6 and has the 128/132GB size limitation. Can you see the full 250GB on another computer?

Stephen714

21 Posts

February 17th, 2006 11:00

I am having almost the same problem with my Inspiron 8200.  I have one Western Digital usb drive that works fine and another that I have important files stored on and recently went to retrieve the files and Windows does not recognize the drive.  It does "ding" when I plug it into the usb port and device manager sees a problem usb device without drivers.  You mention XP power toys.  I do have several of them installed.  Do they have any problems associated with them?
I do have the other Western Digital drive that is recognized and works just fine though.   Any ideas?  I really need access to these files without spending a fortune on data recovery.  (BTW, this is just the latest in a series of external usb drives I have had problems similar to this when trying to use with the Inspiron 8200.)  I'd really appreciate any ideas.
 

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