2Tb Hard Drive not being detected

DazedAndConfuzed

Hi All,

I've recently purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio 2Tb external hard drive but both of my home pc's aren't detecting it. It comes with a 4Gb usb drive and that's picked up fine but the main drive isn't.

When I connect it to my Windows 7 pc it makes a noise showing something has connected but no windows pop-up and the auto install that's meant to appear doesn't.

The obvious thinking is that the 2Tb hard drive is faulty but I know some pc's have issues with hard drives of that size. If this is the case, can I partition the hard drive on a pc at work (hopefully) and then re-connect it to mine?

Any and all suggestions are appreciated, I got it for a bargain price and they're sold out so it's refund only.

Thanks!

:beer:

Mondez

Sounds like it is faulty to me, you could test it on another system just to be certain though. If they are out of stock, insist they send it back to the manufacturer for you to be repaired/replaced. It is likely that it is the enclosure and not the drive that is at fault, but there is no point trying to take it apart and mess with it is still under warranty.

paddyrg

Was it formatted on a Mac? HFS+ drives will exhibit that behaviour on a PC - you can try HFSExplorer to read the data off the drive (free) or macdrive (expensive) to read/write (and it has been rather unstable when I tried it)

googler

Fair enough, it doesn't Autoplay, but can you see it via My Computer or Disk Management?

DazedAndConfuzed

googler wrote: »

Fair enough, it doesn't Autoplay, but can you see it via My Computer or Disk Management?

The window pops up for the 4Gb usb drive, that shows up fine and is usable but the 2Tb drive isn't showing up anywhere including my computer and disk management.

That's what's making me think it's the 2tb drive as opposed to the cable, the connection, etc?

DazedAndConfuzed

paddyrg wrote: »

Was it formatted on a Mac? HFS+ drives will exhibit that behaviour on a PC - you can try HFSExplorer to read the data off the drive (free) or macdrive (expensive) to read/write (and it has been rather unstable when I tried it)

Hi, I don't know about how it was formatted, and I can't format it myself as I can't see it at all.

debitcardmayhem

Have you gone in to Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management and see what is detected in there?

DazedAndConfuzed

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Have you gone in to Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management and see what is detected in there?

Hi, yeah I've had a look through that route and it's only finding the 4Gb USB stick

debitcardmayhem

Also some externals now come with a virtual dvd at the beginning (which might the 4gb USB disk you are seeing ) which contains the manufacturers utilities including encryption/formatting and other stuff like AV free trials etc?

DazedAndConfuzed

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Also some externals now come with a virtual dvd at the beginning (which might the 4gb USB disk you are seeing ) which contains the manufacturers utilities including encryption/formatting and other stuff like AV free trials etc?

Hi, there's meant to be a virtual DVD on there that launches the software but that's not launching when the hard drive is plugged in, and I can't access the disk to launch it manually. Am thinking that it's a case of returning it to Argos and hoping they offer a refund argument-free

debitcardmayhem

You could use the free gparted magic tool to load gparted from a USB stick/CD rom , it may detect it first ? http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php