Unable to see my External HDDs in My Computer

[JohnnieBoy]

Can anyone please help and I am getting a little frustrated now.  I can that my external HDDs are showing in Device Manager but they are not showing in My Computer and therefore I am unable to extract any information that they may hold.

I am using Windows Vista Home Basic on one of my laptops and Windows Ultimate on my other laptop and PC and get the same problem.
Many thanks to you all.

JohnnieBoy

[Geek-9pm]

You can get into the drive from another program.
Try Disk Management.
Or try Internet Explorer.


The problem is said to be from USB adapters that are not as compatible as you would want. You may need to install a special driver.

[JJ 3000]

So these two are different external drives, and they are not working on multiple computers. Is that right?

[fernmo]

My old T21 laptop has a 20meg hard drive.
When I tried to use a usb drive of 120meg I could not access it.
After much research I found two registry values which were set to upper and lower disk drive sizes.When I altered the upper size( with regedit I think) I could immediately use the external drive.
This is undoubtably an IBM tactic to ensure the model is distinct from the next one up and thus you may opt for a more expensive laptop.
It was nothing to do with drive management etc.
Worth looking into  this if the existing internal drive is of a lower size than the new usb drive.You need to search the registry for something like maxdisksize and mindisksize.I am sorry I cant remember exactly.

[Geek-9pm]

It was nothing to do with drive management etc.

Why do you say that?
You did not try disk management?

As for me, I am able to manage my USB drives and ay other drive with disk management even when it does not show up in My Computer. So I see no need to dig into the registry to fix something that does not matter.

Here is why we do not think it is an IBM problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2000815&tstart=0

This is a common problem an the recommended solution is to use Disk Management, or other tool,  not edit the registry. This is not my idea. I also have done extensive research and have not found that registry tweaks or the best workaround. This is no just my conclusion, but what is most often given as the answer for the average user.

However, if you have found something that explains this problem, please provide us a link so we can also read it and understand the problem

[JohnnieBoy]

Thanks to you all everything is now fine.  I did use Disk Management and it worked brilliantly.  Many thanks once again for your help and assistance in resolving my problem.  Keep up the good work as there is malways someone that needs help out there.