LaCie rugged harddisk on Latitude E5420 not working

LaCie Rugged Hard Disk

FireWire 400 & 800 | USB 2.0

it is a portable type drive, only an USB connection.

Hi RZO,

What's the model of your external drive? Does it have its own power supply or is it a "portable" type drive?

What I want you to do is check two places when you plug the drive in, devices and disk management. See if the drive is correctly shown in devices. Then check if disk management shows the drive and if a drive letter is assigned to it. If there is no drive letter, try assigning one manually.

In devices i see Rugged USB. When I doubleclick on it, it gives the model and Categorie, nothing more.

In Disk Management it is showed as Disk and Disk 1. Under Volumes the letter E sometimes pops up. (depends if he is asking to format the drive.

Disk Management stopped working. When i start it again i cannot assign a drive letter. It says i have to refresh disk management.

When i try to format the disk it gives an erro saying Windows was unable to complete the format.

I think that there is not enough power going over USB on this machine.

When i try an older version of the LaCie (external harddisk with power adapter) it works fine.

What I would do is remove all other storage devices aside from your hard drive and DVD drive. Then check disk management and try to assign a different drive letter, such as M. It may be necessary to do this in safe mode.

Most common problem is that the drive needs a POWERED USB hub with 5 amp power supply or a USB Y cable to tap extra power using 2 ports instead of 1.

Mini-Usb Y-Cable$2.95 Amazon.com

I have a few of the Bright orange Rubber Drives.

Rather than use a Y cable Lacie has 2 USB cables.

1 is the data cable and the other is usb to a power cable that plugs into the round hole on the back of the drive

to add extra power.

When you use the FIREWIRE version of the drive this cable is not necessary as the drive gets power from the 12v 6 pin firewire connection.

Hi osprey4, 

I have the same problem: My LaCie external Hard disk does not work with my new Dell Latitude 5420. However with other laptops including another Latitude 5420 of a friend of mine it works properly.

It is a 160GB LaCie Mobile Disk USB2.0.

I have already
- run DELL diagnostics (result: everything is fine)
- checked the USB ports
- updateted the driver SW
- updated USB controller SW
- formated the external disc with another laptop
- tried at any of the USB ports
- tried it with and without the own power supply....

By the way: Formatting via my Latitude was not possible - neitther with "format" cmd nor via DISKPART cmd.

Hi bclarin,

Did you try all of the suggestions listed in this thread?

Tell me what shows up in disk management?

Hi osprey4,

Yes, I did.
Do you have any futher ideas how I could solve the problem?

Thanks,
bclarin

Well, after starting the disc mamager the laptop is trying to connect the external disc.
This takes some time. Then the failure message pops up that the disc E: has to
be formatted.

After closing this failure message window the disc manager is as shown in the attached screenshot.

However the laptop is again and again trying  to connect the external disc. During these attempts the disc manager is in status 'not responding' and
during this period the disc 1 (in the lower part of the window) disappears.

Try assigning a drive letter, such as M.

Hi osprey,

I have assigned drive letter M, but unfortunately still exactly the same misbehavior :-(

Best regards,
bclarin