Okay, so I have a problem with my 160 gig external hard drive that I have not been able to solve up for the life of me. I have an IBM Thinkpad T43 notebook and a while ago I had to use a set of recovery discs due to a corrupt file which totally wiped out my hard drive. I put all my media on my external USB hard drive, but when I got my computer set up again I tried to access the drive but had no luck. I tried to format it but I got an error message saying that I needed to restart my computer to format. I did that but got the same message. It showed up in the Device Manager, the Safely Remove Hardware and Disc Management but not My Computer. I unistalled the driver and restarted to no avail. I tried it on another computer and it worked so I formatted it on there but the situation did not change when I plugged it back into my computer. I tried removing all the USB devices and the power source and letting it sit for a while (I read it on another forum) but that didn't work. I checked Disk Management and the drive is marked as Active (Healthy). Also, the name and drive letter were replaced by "New Volume" every time I plugged in the drive. After I assign a drive letter to the drive, I clicked Open, then I got an error that said the drive does not exist. I clicked it again, and it opened up. However, it still did not appear in My Computer and I could not save to it from any program.
Since I had not had any luck with software, I thought I'd see if it was a hardware problem. I tried a new hard drive (250 gig) and it didn't work. I tried two different enclosures with no luck. I then hooked up a spare dvd burner to one of the enclosures I tried and it worked perfectly, so I have absolutly no idea what is wrong. Appearently, there is no combination of hard drive and enclosure that works with my computer and I'm hoping to fix this.
BTW, I'm using Windows XP SP2.
Since I had not had any luck with software, I thought I'd see if it was a hardware problem. I tried a new hard drive (250 gig) and it didn't work. I tried two different enclosures with no luck. I then hooked up a spare dvd burner to one of the enclosures I tried and it worked perfectly, so I have absolutly no idea what is wrong. Appearently, there is no combination of hard drive and enclosure that works with my computer and I'm hoping to fix this.
BTW, I'm using Windows XP SP2.