External Hard Drive Problem

[Scunner]

Wondering if anyone knows how to solve this one...

I have a USB hard drive which is very good, but has suddenly stopped working with my laptop. It works with my desktop, my old laptop, even my telly - but when I plug it into my laptop it recognises it ok, but as a CD/DVD drive

I have tons of stuff on it and I know I could back it up and reformat but as it works on just about anything else I'd rather not. Any deas why it sees a DVD drive? It used to recognise it as a HD, only recently did this change.

Thanks!

Keith

[KKOB]

Our resident expert, Lance, will be along soon. He's bound to know how to sort it out.  

[Jim Fraser]

Have you tried plugging in another HD, flash drive or memory card to see the reaction to them.

[stoop]

Interesting problem. Not got an answer but if all fails I would back everyting up and then re-format it. It might behave after that.

[martinp2502]

if you type "usb hard drive not detected" in google various forums pop up. You'll probably find an answer there somehwere.

Also try the Microsoft support pages.
http://support.microsoft.com/

Good luck.

[anna-marie01]

Try this it's worked for me when mine was messing about:
1) Go to start menu right click my computer and go to properties on the drop down menu.

2) once "system properties" has popped up go to device manager, if you are using windows XP its under the hardware tab for windows 7 it is up the top left hand corner called "device manager"

3) once device manager has popped up look under "disk drives" when your external hard drive is plugged in you should see your external hard drive underneath there you can't miss it for e.g. if its a WD western it will be called that underneath disk drives.If its there right click it and hit "uninstall"

4) Now right click anywhere in the device manager window preferably in the white area and go to "refresh" it will now automatically find the external hdd and install the drivers again.

Should be working now, if not and the external hdd isn't then it's your usb ports. Does your computer make a sound when you connect the usb to it?

[Libra]

Looks like a problem of your laptop rather than your external HDD. I would suggest first to back up your data on the external drive in case anything happens while trying. Formatting the drive might not be the proper solution. It looks like a driver or USB port problem of your laptop.

[usedbustickets]

Might also be a driver problem on your PC/Laptop.  Try replacing or even upgrading the driver for the external HDD on your PC/Laptop.

[ukchris]

I would say this is a registry problem. More than likely to do with the filter sets for the class=diskdrive

if you are running windows xp, there is a microsoft fixit program that will do it for you
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925196/en-us

vista or windows 7 is a manual fix i'm afraid
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic137666.html
just look for the section marked fix disk filter rather than cd/dvd filter

i have seen similar problems with customers using internet dongles, the machine doesn't detect the drive part so the software doesn't automatically install.