XPS m1710 not recognising external hard disk

Being you just purchased this new HD. First I would try it on another computer if it works on another computer go into the bios and set your USB to 2.0. Also do you have a power adaptor? Does the laptop have enough power to feed the external HD through usb. If power is not a problem you can go into device manager check and see if it is noticed their and or it is but have a exclamination mark highlighted in yellow next to it? If it does it needs a driver. If it is a USB issue or you suspect a usb issue reset them with everything removed from all of your USB ports go into device manager and delete all of the unerversal bus controlers then reboot windows will reinstall them upon reboot. NOTE: You will have to reinstall drivers for all your USB devices.

 

Best Wishes

 

-----------------------------------------------------
XPS M1710, T2500
17 UltraSharp TrueLife WUXGA
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Bluetooth & Intel Pro 3945ABG
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
D-Dock /Sound BlasterX-FI Xtream
Logitech Z 5300 5.1 Speakers
Logitech MX 1000 Cordless Laser Mouse
Nostromo n52 Game pad
----------------------------------------------------

thanks for replying jeff.

 

the external hard disk enclosure has a power adapter that has to be plugged into a power outlet and it works on my desktop. sometimes the m1710 will pick up the drive but it will say that the usb device has malfunctioned and cannot be used.

 

on a couple occasions i went into the device manager and under the usb controllers i saw unknown device and i removed it, then i scanned for hardware changes. then it was recognised and reinstalled as a usb mass storage device but it was showing up as a drive with 0 capacity and RAW file system.

 

on the desktop, if i plug it in it will take a little while but it shows up with 300Gb capacity and i was able to load and use files on it

What happens when you click Start >My Computer? Do you see the drive when it is pluged in? If it is sometimes reconizeing a a usb mass storage device. I would make sure the USB is set to 2.0 and I would also reset them all in device manager.

 

Best Wishes

 

-----------------------------------------------------
XPS M1710, T2500
17 UltraSharp TrueLife WUXGA
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Bluetooth & Intel Pro 3945ABG
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
D-Dock /Sound BlasterX-FI Xtream
Logitech Z 5300 5.1 Speakers
Logitech MX 1000 Cordless Laser Mouse
Nostromo n52 Game pad
----------------------------------------------------

if i plug it in to my destop which is not a brand name machine, i see the drives (i.e. the partitions i created, i also tried it when it was not partitioned and just one big 300 gb drive).....

 

on the m1710, i see nothing.

 

however i dont see the drive on the pcs at my workplace either, i get the message that my hardware is working correctly and then another message comes up saying that the usb device ha malfunctioned.

 

how do i make sure set the usb to 2?

will try the bios changes in a couple secs when i reboot. no the device does not have an exclamation mark on it, it is showing up under usb controllers as unknown device.

 

i tried removing all the usb devices in the device manager for some reason when i did that i lost the bluetooth keyboard and mouse until i rebooted and all the devices were reinstalled.

 

the hard disk (320Gb) had stopped working, i returned it today and got another one but same issue. but this one is not showing up at all in my computer. i do see the three partitions on the desktop and i can use them so it can't be the drive. plus when i plugged the drive into the sata connections on the disk at work it worked fine.

To change it to USB2.0 reboot and continusly press F2 their you make changes in the bios pages. The 2 changes that I would change is USB 2.0 and while you are their I would also set the HD acustic to performance.

 

Have you went to device manager while the external drive is pluged in to check if you have a exclamination mark highlighted in yellow? Which means it is a driver issue. You will look all the way at the bottom under universal buss controler. Also you may want to reset all of the USB 's which is simple while everything is unpluged from all of your USB's go into device manager and delete all of them then reboot and windows will reinstall them. When you do this you will have to reinstall your USB device drivers that were installed before like printer and mouse or whatever devices you have been useing in your USB.

 

I am leaning twoards you have a bad external HD being it is showing up as A Raw with 0 space it should be showing up default as a(E) not a (A)

 

You also may want to try to reformat the drive.

I have a 100 Gig Seagate portable USB drive and it shows up as (E) and I have not changed or modified any of my drives.

 

Best Wishes

 

-----------------------------------------------------
XPS M1710, T2500
17 UltraSharp TrueLife WUXGA
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Bluetooth & Intel Pro 3945ABG
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
D-Dock /Sound BlasterX-FI Xtream
Logitech Z 5300 5.1 Speakers
Logitech MX 1000 Cordless Laser Mouse
Nostromo n52 Game pad
---------------------------------------------------- 

made the changes in the bios, now it's saying that the usb device has malfunctioned and it's still showing up as unkown device in the device manager

 

No drivers are installed for this device.

If you are having problems with this device, click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter.

 

but then this device is not suppose to require me to manually install drivers in win xp pro sp2

All USB devices need driversit's just some very comon ones are already within windows. If this is the second HD that you are haveing problems with but it works on your work computer I would say it is just incompatable with your Laptop. Not trying to be rude or anything but is it a very cheap HD? Sometimes the very cheap budget Hard Drives don't work on certin PC's. I for one have been their and learned my lesson to purchase namebrand hard Drives. Which is why my portable HD is a seagate. I once purchased a cheap noname external HD off E-Bay and swaped it out 3 times and still could not get it to work with my XPS Gen 1. I wound up paying more in the long run because of shiping. Then I got the Seagate and have had 0 problems and I have used this drive on many many different PC's as thats what I bought it for to back up Data when I worked on someones PC when I used to have the time. Great for backing up data when you need to do a re install.

 

Best Wishes

 

-----------------------------------------------------
XPS M1710, T2500
17 UltraSharp TrueLife WUXGA
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Bluetooth & Intel Pro 3945ABG
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
D-Dock /Sound BlasterX-FI Xtream
Logitech Z 5300 5.1 Speakers
Logitech MX 1000 Cordless Laser Mouse
Nostromo n52 Game pad
----------------------------------------------------  

no, don't believe it is a cheap drive, this is it:

 

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=a29099f4fa74c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&locale=en-US

 

ah, i got it to work. I opened the enclosure and i was looking at the circuit board and i pulled the sata cable off of connector and i put it back on and the drive registered on the laptop. then i tried moving the usb cable from the current port on the m1710 to another one and the drive didnt show up again so i thought the fact that the drive flickered initially was a fluke. i moved it around to the other ports and still no drive. i have a usb printer connected to the m1710 and i thought maybe there is a problem with the cable so i used the printer cable to connect the drive to the laptop and it connected straight away. it's working properly now. thanks for your help and advice it was much appreiciated.

Apparently my troubles aren't over. When I was trying to get this external drive to work, the hard disk failed after a couple attempts and I got a replacement.

 

I didn't think much of it at the time. When I returned the drive to the store (STAR Commercial Ltd) I asked them to check the drive enclosure to see if it was malfunctioning and they refused because they said they didnt have a hard disk available to test it with and that testing the device was beyond their capability; they just checked the hard disk , saw it was non-functional and gave me a replacement.

 

Well the drive has failed again, now they think that I'm doing something to cause the drive to fail.

 

I asked them to check the enclosure again but they refused this time because I accidentally broke the plastic at the bottom of the case when I was reassembling the enclosure and hard after I had gotten it working. The broken piece has nothing to do with any electrical parts and I told them they dont have to change that piece for me if anything is wrong with the electrical head of the device, they could just swop the head for me (the device is still under 30 day warranty).