Removable Hard Drive - Where is it ??!!

[westwinds31]

Hi,

I've got a removable hard drive.....500GB LACIE....which has been great, although I now have a problem in that my laptop is not recognising it.  The hard drive itself powers up and connects through a USB cable....the light comes on, the laptop makes noises as if to recognise it and then nothing.  My Computer shows not external device. However, in Administrative Tools/Computer Management...Disk1 is there a clear as day...healthy and active...of course I can't access it from this position ! Also, I view my photos on HP Image Zone and that recognises the E:/LACIE drive when I go to view pictures.  Can anyone help...how do I get my laptop to recognise the hard drive in My Computer ?

Thanks in advance...I am running on XP by the way....this happens to my camera as well, when it isn't recognised on the main system.

[kpac]

Is the drive it is plugged into "E:\"? If so, try clicking the start button, run, and type: "E:\" (without quotes).
Can you access the files now?

But to get the problem sorted.....
Try going to Control Panel, Device Manager. Do you see the name of the hard drive under "disk drives" or "universal serial bus controllers"?

[westwinds31]

Thanks for the reply...

I have tried the "E:/" in the Run command...but nothing comes up except "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action.  Create an association in the File Options control panel"

When I go to Device Manager....under disk drives there is a Toshiba drive (my laptop hard drive i presume) and another one comes up when I plug the removable hard drive in (SAMSUNG HD501LJ USB Device)....the removable hard drive is nothing to do with SAMSUNG !!!

Not sure what to do now ?

[westwinds31]

Well...it doesn't look good !!.....I've just managed to open the E:/ by going to Control Panel...Administrative Tools...Computer Management...and then Disk management...and there is my removable hard drive...sitting on the E:/ drive !! I clicked right and opened it and it comes up with the disk files..but there is a problem in that I can't copy my updated files (in My Documents) into the removable disk, as it says that the file names are too long and then it just renames them and gives them another file name !!

[kpac]

So you cant copy and paste the files to the HD?

Try selecting all the files you want (click on the files while holding CTRL or SHIFT), right click on them, and select "send to". Does your hard drive come up in the list?

What does it rename the files to?