Pocket HDD help?????

**pck786** · 10th January 2005

I have a pocket hdd which i can connect with usb. When connected the operating system (WinXp) recognises the device and says its installed and ready to use but i am unable to see it through my computer or access it through msdos. I have tried
it on other computers as well but still the same problem. Any ideas n e 1???

**Little John** · 11th January 2005

Is the drive brand spanking new?

the drive proberbly needs partitioning and formatting before it can be used

right click my computer and click manage
click disk management inder storage and you will see all the drives on your system proberbly 1 of them is your USB drive right click the drive and in the menu you should have a few options I cant remember them off the top of my head but you need to create a partition and format it.

easy

any problems give us a shout

what evver you do stay away from your system hardrive

**David B** · 11th January 2005

pck786, i'm not sure you will be able to see the drive in true MS-DOS

**Little John** · 11th January 2005

Windows XP doesnt have a true version of ms dos anymore. USB drives are accessible in a dos environment it is the bios of the pc that says if it will work or not.

I have a USB drive that I store images of hardrives on so I can restore them rather than reinstalling windows and everything else, boot using a boot disk that doesnt load any usb drivers (for some reason it works) and select the image from the usb drive. works fine for me

**Tasseltine** · 11th January 2005

Found a wierd problem a few months ago with a friend's USB pen drive that could have some relation to this.

The pen drive had decided that it was going to give itself the drive letter E:, which on our work pc's is allocated to the DVD drive. Even though it recognised the device, it would not show it as it had the same letter as an existing drive. I can't remember exactly what I did, but I changed the pen drive to F: and it displayed instantly.

I probably did it through administrative tools, but I dunno. Hope that helps someone.

**pck786** · 11th January 2005

Thanks for the replys i have tried changing the drive letter didnt seem to work and i also went to disk management but the drive isnt there. Whats wierd is under device manager under usb it recognises a usb mass storage device and says it working perfectly. I have no idea what it could be any other suggesions are welcome plzz.

**dert** · 11th January 2005

Are you trying to use this from a front USB port on you system?

The reason I'm asking is I've had similar problems and I've put it down to the fact front USB ports are connected to the motherboard by headers and not straight connections like the ones on the rear.

As stated I had a similar problem when using front USB but worked no probs when connected to the back. It may work for you if you are using front USB, but if you are connecting through the rear, can't help

**dert** · 11th January 2005

Forgot to add...I think it may have something to do with power consumtion of a pocket HDD as my USB pen drive works no problem through the front USB which obviously doesn't need as much power to use.