External USB drive not recognized, sorta

[watrgate]

I have a problem with an external USB hard drive. Its a Seagate FreeAgent Pro unit and it is new. It is shown as it is supposed to in Windows Device Manager (both as a mass storage device and a Seagate hard drive). It does appear as a hard drive in Windows Explorer. But it does not register in Disk Management. You open it and there is no data there. If you take the drive to another computer it works just fine. Other USB devices work fine on the computer.

Things I've tried:
1) Removing the device and letting it rediscover
2) Removing all other USB devices and connecting the drive only
3) Re-arranging the USB cables so that the drive is on a motherboard-mounted USB port and not the PCI add-in card.

This is the second drive I've tried. A previous Western Digital unit had the same problem and I returned it thinking the unit was bad.

My computer:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Memory: 1.25 GB RAM
MoBo: Albatron KX400-8X
OS: Windows XP SP2 w/latest updates
Cards: ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500, 4-Port USB 2.0 card, 4-port 1394 card, fast ethernet NIC

 

[kestrel1]

Get the latest drivers for your onboard USB & for your USB card.

 

[wahnula]

thread751-1382280

...talks about an application that helps Windows recognize partitions, and

thread602-1313722

mentions the Autoplay Repair Wizard and how to repair it. ...This scenario seems more likely.



Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[watrgate]

To answer both replies, the OS has the latest drivers. All other USB devices work well.

As for AutoFix and TestDisk, I need a target to run the tools on. The OS reports a drive letter in Windows Explorer but looking in Disk Management, there is nothing so the tools do not see the drive.

The fact that the drive enclosure works just fine on any other machine pretty much isolates the problem to the mobo. I made a mistake in my write-up above. All the USB ports go to the mobo (two onboard, four on headers). I may go look for an add-in card to see if the problem goes away. That or get an eSATA card (the FreeAgent has that as an option).