Andy: My NexStar 3 2.5 inch External hard drive spins, activates my “safely remove hardware” but never shows up. Why
When I plug it into the computer i get that “ding-up” sound that it’s detected, but It never shows up on “My Computer” and I can’t get to any of the files. I’ve also tried it on my ex-wife’s laptop which it used to work on both machines and now works on neither.
Another note: It’s USB 2.0 and I’ve tried to plug it in different ports. It hasn’t been mishandled and always packed safely in a padded carrying pouch, until I decided to try to get it working again just today.
I doubt it is a virus problem as I always keep my anti-virus up to date and don’t open email attachments. I’m pretty good with computers and such and have a 3.5″ external enclosure that works just fine. I am not sure what is the manufacturer of the 2.5″ drive, but if I hold it to my ear as I plug it in, I can hear it start spinning, and I can hear the heads moving. Any suggestions how to get it fixed without losing my files?
Well, I left it plugged in for a few minutes this time and it assigned it a drive letter G. which isn’t used but it still will not allow me to access the files. I get the following error when clicking onit in “My Computer”… “G: is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupt and unreadable.” I would be happy even being able to format it if I have to just to have it working, though I am sure there are files on there that could never be replaced.. And it does draw it’s power from the USB port though that was never an issue before I have used it many times and never even owned a power cord for it..
And it’s there in disk management, says it’s status is healthy, but doesn’t show it as NTFS and I know it is.. And shows it as 100% empty… It’s a (so called)100 Gig.. Shows 93.15 Gig free..
Well, tried formatting through there… It appears it’s working, but I hate to lose my data… $ hit happens… It was only stuff dealing with my ex-wife… She will be replaced anyway.. Probably for the best it’s gone… Maybe that was the problem.. She was corrupt too.. LOL
Answers and Views:
Answer by Colinc
Go to control panel, administrative tools/computer management/disk manager. You will see it there unless it is a non-standard disk, you will need to initialise it and set it’s drive letter.
I would be tempted to check in your drive management just incase it’s trying to assign itself a pre-used drive letter. If you go to control panel> administrative tools> computer management> and then click on disk management on the left, can you see the drive at all listed??
Also are you using an external psu with that drive? Some USB ports do not quite put out enough power to power these drives sufficiantly, so they spin up, but you cannot access them.
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