External HDD not working... or is it??

[Zephik]

Well I'm confused as to what the problem is to be quite honest. Windows makes that usb connection sound when I plug it in as well as when I turn it on, but it doesn't show up anywhere. Anyone have an idea? or a way that could fix it? I don't mind losing any of the information on it, there isn't anything that important. The external casing is NexStar3 btw, the hdd I bought separate. You can see what my hdd is in the picture below.

[crenn]

See if Disk Manager shows anything.

[Luke122]

Agreed.. disk manager.

Right click on "My computer" and choose "Manage". Select "Disk Manager" from the list, and see if it's in there. Most times, it's a drive letter conflict causing this error, so once you spot it in the list, right click on it, and choose "Change drive letter".

Change it to something down the list, like R or S, and you should be good to go.

[Zephik]

I guess its one or both of those first two? Why are they blank? I can't do anything other than "delete partition" on either of them.

In the device manager screen, it says location 0. Although you could read that in the first pic. But just in case you missed it. Is location 0 even a location? lol

.....
Yep, thats the right drive. I turned off the external and they both disappeared. So what do I do? I guess the only thing I can do? Delete the partition or whatever?

I think the second blank spot, which is only a gigabyte or something, is from trying to install an OS onto my external.

.....
The second blank spot doesn't say delete partition. It says Delete Logical Drive. :scratches head:

[jdbnsn]

I'm going to move this to the hard drive section.

[Zephik]

Well I got the drive working and all, but I need to format it. I've tried twice now and it keeps telling me that I'm unable to format after a couple minutes. Any ideas?

Also, I have another hard drive that is my main in my other computer. I've used another hard drive in that computer and the computer works just fine. But when I use my hard drive, it posts the boot info screen and then goes onto the black screen with the single blinking line thingy and just stops. It doesn't freeze, it just doesn't do anything from there. Anyone have any ideas whats up with that one? I've tried popping in an ubuntu cd to install onto the hard drive, or at least to run live, but that doesn't do anything sense it doesn't get past the black screen with the blinky line. Very weird...

[Luke122]

It sounds to me like physical damage on the disk. Depending on the manufacturer, you can get recovery/repair tools from them, or you might want to look into something like Spinrite.

Have you tried it on another machine? Have you tried installing the drive into the PC, rather than pluggin it in externally?

[Zephik]

Well, I got the format to like 99 percent this time, then it gave me the message again. So I tried a "quick format" and it worked just fine it seems. I could get inside, but I haven't tested it out further than that yet. Currently I'm running the windows program to check for errors and all that jazz. Which is taking FOREVER. I'll sleep on it I guess.

I don't have another PC to try it on, since my other one is acting up too. I just turned it off one day, then turned it on the next and it just wouldn't go past that blank screen with the blinky line.

[NightrainSrt4]

The reason it is working with a quick format is that quick format only deletes the files. A full format checks the disk for bad sectors. So with your quick format ya, you deleted what was there, but the reason the full format keeps having an error is most likely physical damage as mentioned above.

What you did with quick format was just delete the files, it didn't check the drive for any issues.