Peripherals forum: External hard drive no longer recognized by my computer

http://www.ehow.com/how_7371897_fix-not-reading-removable-storage.html

Yes I tried what was told in the link. I changed the the Gear the Gear Head to G: but the F: drive will no longer recognize the Lacie External Drive. Yesterday I uninstalled the Gear Head DVD-RAM via the Hardware Device Manager and the Lacie was not recognized. I also went to C:\Windows\inf\infcache.1 and deleted the file and reinstalled the Gear Head USB device. XP Pro reinstalled the Gear Head when I plugged it up. But it did not recognize the Lacie in that instance as well.

Yes, folk might write that the USB Zip drive test or tell us that USB 2.0 is backwards compatible but given the story it sounds like an older PC. 80GB should be OK even on XP Pro. I know folk don't want to reveal if they have XP Pro SP3 but in some cases it matters. In this case it might but the clues are not here.

That is, I don't see much about this computer. But try all the USB ports and other USB cables to the drive. If the drive is USB powered, then use one of those power boosting Y USB cables.

I don't want to upset you but "it worked before" is a common phrase you hear from folk with old gear.
Bob

I do not have a spare Y USB cable but I will invest in one tomorrow. I do have Windows XP Pro SP3.

Would it be okay if I removed the DVD-RAM from the Y USB cable and try the Lacie using that Y USB cable?

In my kit I carry a spare Y cable for times like this.
Bob

It might be help to also say that both the DVD-RAM and the Lacie 80gb 2.0 External are PNPs. I do not have the specs for the Lacie because it was given to me by a friend and he no longer has any info on the Lacie. I do not have any driver info for the Lacie as a result to submit to Lacie.com . Besides XP Pro always detected the device in the past but now does not. I also plugged in the Zip drive and it went straight to F: now that I have assigned the DVD-RAM to G:

Since you don't see any sign of it in device manager, it sounds more like the USB port or power issues. I don't suspect the OS too much yet but you can always boot up some LiveCD as Ubuntu to test the hardware. (No install, free.)