Vista unable to see unformatted external drive
The hubby lost his hard drive several weeks ago. Got me thinking about being better about backing up my laptop. I've been backing up files manually to a flash drive approximately once every couple of weeks; but that was far from consistent. We've got an extra hard drive lying around, so hubby ordered an enclosure for the drive for me and it arrived yesterday. He installed the drive into the enclosure for me, and off I went this morning to try to get the backup up and running.
The enclosure we ordered is Venus DS3. Instructions from the skimpy booklet says that Vista does not require driver installation. Just plug and play. I turned on the drive, plug it into a USB slot, and ...nothing. I clicked My Computer, no new drives there. The instruction says to go to My Computer, right click to Manage, then Disk Management, and the new drive should be there, and it's suppose to prompt me to format the disk. Still nothing. I tried using another USB slot. Still nothing. Then I read a customer review on NewEgg.com about the enclosure that someone else had problems with not one, but three enclosures on Vista, and was unable to get a response from support. I emailed support and got a response right away; AMS advised me to try another USB cable (which I didn't have) and to check the IDE jumper to make sure it's set to master. At this point, I was a little worried...
Long story short, lucky for me, my good friend Peter had a similar experience. He solved the problem by using another system (non-Vista - he used Linux) to format the drive first and afterward, the Vista system is able to see the formatted drive. I used the hubby's Win2000 (or XP, can't remember) system to first format the drive, and now I'm able to use the external drive with my Vista system. A backup is on its way...
The enclosure we ordered is Venus DS3. Instructions from the skimpy booklet says that Vista does not require driver installation. Just plug and play. I turned on the drive, plug it into a USB slot, and ...nothing. I clicked My Computer, no new drives there. The instruction says to go to My Computer, right click to Manage, then Disk Management, and the new drive should be there, and it's suppose to prompt me to format the disk. Still nothing. I tried using another USB slot. Still nothing. Then I read a customer review on NewEgg.com about the enclosure that someone else had problems with not one, but three enclosures on Vista, and was unable to get a response from support. I emailed support and got a response right away; AMS advised me to try another USB cable (which I didn't have) and to check the IDE jumper to make sure it's set to master. At this point, I was a little worried...
Long story short, lucky for me, my good friend Peter had a similar experience. He solved the problem by using another system (non-Vista - he used Linux) to format the drive first and afterward, the Vista system is able to see the formatted drive. I used the hubby's Win2000 (or XP, can't remember) system to first format the drive, and now I'm able to use the external drive with my Vista system. A backup is on its way...
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