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External USB drive not showing on PC
mac2708
Posts: 3,349 Forum Member
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A friend has a Sony Vaio Tap20 All-in-one PC running Windows 8.1 from which he transfers files (films etc) to an external Seagate 1TB USB drive to play on his TV
This has worked without problem but now the Seagate USB drive is not seen by the PC nor does it appear in Disk Management. The indicator light is on showing that it's getting power.
It makes no difference which USB socket on the PC that the Seagate is plugged into.
The Seagate USB drive is recognised by the TV and other PCs.
The Sony PC recognises other external hard drives and flash drives in either USB socket.
Device Manager shows that everything is working.
Any ideas welcome that I can pass on to him to try
This has worked without problem but now the Seagate USB drive is not seen by the PC nor does it appear in Disk Management. The indicator light is on showing that it's getting power.
It makes no difference which USB socket on the PC that the Seagate is plugged into.
The Seagate USB drive is recognised by the TV and other PCs.
The Sony PC recognises other external hard drives and flash drives in either USB socket.
Device Manager shows that everything is working.
Any ideas welcome that I can pass on to him to try
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Has he tried giving it a little wiggle?
He could also remove the USB ports from device manager and let the system reinstall them.
The Sony PC recognises other external hard drives and flash drives in either USB socket (and other devices) - they are quite a tight fit in either USB socket on the PC but 'wiiggling' has been tried.
The Seagate external USB drive works on three other PCs and a TV and Blu-ray player.
So it doesn't appear to be the USB sockets on the PC as everything plugged into them works and the external drive is fine on other PCs etc.
Is it USB powered or has its own power supply ?
Are the other computers it works on Windows 8, 8.1 or something else ?
Whatever the answers to my questions are I still probably wouldn't be any the wiser
http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=1004
Right click the Not Connected and Safe to Unplug items, then Uninstall. (one at a time)
(if you accidentally disconnect current keyboard or mouse, try re-plugging or just reboot)
When all is tidied up, try the Seagate again.
Makes no sense to me either
The Seagate is a USB powered external hard drive and the indicator light on it shows it's getting power when plugged into the Sony Vaio Tap20
The other PCs it works on are all Windows 7 (as well as the TV and Blu-ray player) - I don't know anyone else with a Windows 8/8.1 PC to try it on. Windows 8 would appear to be the problem.
The last time I remember the Seagate working was about two weeks ago. Clutching at straws, I know, but could the last update to Windows 8.1 have anything to do with it.
I'll try to see it myself today in the hopes that I can figure out something obvious (not holding my breath though:()
The external drive only has the one cable (about 10" long) and is attached with what looks like a proprietary connector.
It's also been tried in a powered USB hub connected to the Sony PC but makes no difference.
And, it worked without problems until recently when plugged into either USB socket on the Sony
I had a usb3 drive that wasn't recognised until I downloaded and installed Intel usb3 drivers.
Maybe the Windows upgrade disturbed your usb driver setup.
A web search search brought up a cluster of threads about "Intel Usb 3.0 driver Windows 8.1".
That's hit the nail on the head, I think
The external hard drive is USB3 and so it looks like the update messed up the USB drivers.
Both ports on the PC are USB3 but all other drives that have been tried have been USB2 and other PCs on which the Seagate is OK are USB2 only
Thanks a million. At least we're on the way to a solution but IMHO Microsoft has a lot to answer for.
That's the understatement of this century...and the last!
A couple of days ago I had what looked like a major pc crash and my pc wouldn't boot from my c drive. My recovery disc wasn't co-operating so I ended up disconnecting 3 of my 4 HDDs and rebooted sucessfully albeit to "Windows didn't terminate normally" screen. Reconnected the other HDDs and all was well.
I today connected a new usb3 enclosure and got usb3 speeds immediately. Then I connected another usb3 and got the message about faster transfer speeds being available. I had to reinstall the Intel usb3 driver utility.
So...
Usb3 implementation in Win7 is flaky (but Intel do not have a separate driver utility for Win 8 as they view it as unnecessary).
Some usb3 enclosures are more compliant than others.
I emailed Sony and they advised several things to try.
The first was to reset the BIOS to default which, for some reason, fixed things
I'm still confused as to why it happened - but it's OK now.
Certainly not an option that I would seriously contemplate as my pc motherboard/ processor was bought overclocked and I may have adjusted some other settings in the past.
Sometimes when you get something working again it doesn't pay to ask why but just to be grateful and hope that it doesn't happen again.