Installing an external hard drive

[Rapparee]

Yesterday I took delivery of the LaCie Desktop Hard Disk USB 2.0. It is meant to be plug and play and when I plugged in the power and USB my PC detected the new hardware and after a few minutes said it was installed and ready to use. The drive gave out a few beeps but I have been unable to see it in My Computer or my list of devices in spite of unplugging and rebooting a couple of times. My system is Windows XP Service pack 2 and the machine is about 4 years old.
I'm stlll waiting for feedback from the manufacturer on this question but in the meantime I'd be grateful for any suggestions...

[Tichfield]

Was there no software to install?

I had to install software for mine, but it is a different make.

Is this any help?

http://www.lacie.com/support/index.htm?rid=100 33

[Rapparee]

There was no installation disc in the box. Thanks for this, but I am not sure what exactly to download. Perhaps I should just wait for the manufacturer's reply...

[fo3nix]

Disconnect the drive.

Restart your machine.

Wait 5mins after Windows has loaded for it to properly load.

Then connect the drive. It should sound like it's starting up, and Windows may make a sound indicating it's mounted the drive.

Does this happen?

(Also, was your machine bought with XP, or did you upgrade yourself from 98 or similar?)

[Rapparee]

As far as I can remember it came with XP and got an automatic upgrade to Service Pack 2 at some point.

I'm now going to try this advice - will get back to you. And thanks.

[Rapparee]

Well, fo3nix, the new drive beeped for a little while and the PC made some grinding noises but I still can't see it....

[alfgbt]

Does it show up in disk managment ?.

[Rapparee]

No, just my partitioned C and E drives plus CD drives...

[Fitzer]

Probably isn't formated or is using a drive letter you already have allocated. Now this might be a bit vague as I went Mac some time ago! Go to Control panel and then something like admin services, in there should be computer management, in that should be something along the lines of disk management (possibly what alfgbt was referring to). This should give you a display of all disk devices attached to your machine, if the new external one is there you can right click it and perform various tasks such as mounting it as the drive letter you want and formatting it, if that all works you should be able to see it in My Computer etc. if not then I'm out of ideas I'm afraid.

[Rapparee]

Thanks, Fitzer, but no joy there either.

[ACtheTROLL]

you got to laugh!! .... you have ... or you'd cry

read the manual
http://www.lacie.com/download/manual/um_deskto pharddisk1TB_usb_en.pdf

by the sound of it everything you need is on the drive

http://www.lacie.com/us/support/support_manife st.htm?id=10283

the main points are connect the cable to the unit
switch it on.... connect to the PC

looking at all the comments ... difficult to crit any of them

HOWEVER I notice you say C and E plus cd
I guess you created the second partition after the install

I know this won't be as easy as it sounds ....
my personal pref is to reletter my drives (it's a server thing)
so that optical drives use W: (for writeable) and X:

then C: is the active primary drive ... and D: is always the first logical.

if you've installed progs to E: things can get complicated.

anyhow ... I have had problems with new USB initialising and stealing a the first letter after a gap .... once there they won't move.

try shifting the drives to that all the hdd partitions are sequential ... and the cd/dvds are at the last positions (you can always shift them back)

[Rapparee]

Well, the partition was there before the install but I take your point. Drive E is now Drive D and my cd drives are on Y and Z. Then I disconnected the drive's data cable, rebooted, waited a few minutes and reconnected the data cable. All to no avail. This is starting to drive me nuts. Perhaps it's a faulty data cable...

[ACtheTROLL]

wonder where d went then?

just a bit of info sparked by Fitzer
most usb drives and pens are formated using fat ...
fat 16 for drives >2gb - 32 for the others fat 32 has a theoretical limit of 4Tband is (at the mo) compatible with the largest number of OSs.

now here is the gotcha!
XP will only create and format a partition >32Gb
so if you re-partition and reformat a usb disc in XP you won't be able to put it back ;(
(not without utilities ... or a windows 98 boot anyhow).


back yo you rap
do you have access to another pc you can try the drive in?

HDDs should give the least problems of any type of usb ....

[Rapparee]

Thanks, AC. I'm now going to go for another avenue of info i.e. ask the brother-in-law who usually sorts out this stuff for me. Didn't want to bother him before as he is a Senior Support Guy and is always very busy. Thought I might get a quick fix on here. The answers have all been brilliant but I suspect the problem lies with my old PC. Incidentally it was the brother-in-law who renamed my D drive to Z some time ago as a more logical way of listing drives, so drive D has been vacant a long time.
Anyway if and when I get this sorted out I will post back here with the story. In the meantime I'd like to thank everyone in this thread for taking the time and trouble to be so brilliantly helpful. I'm very grateful to you all.
I wonder what happened to floppy disks...