external hard drive no longer shows up in Vista

nehwilliams · 01-27-2009, 12:49 AM

I recently purchased a SATA Hitachi Hard Drive (320 GB) and installed it in an external USB drive enclosure. I formatted and partitioned it fine under Vista and started using it. Last week it stopped showing up as a lettered drive and it does not appear under device management. The drive gets power and it sounds like it is working but I can't get it to show up. I bought a new enclosure thinking that might be the problem. But that had no effect. I moved a lot of data to this and would like to be able to access it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

**raptor_pa** · 01-27-2009, 08:09 AM

Check Disk management and see if the disk is shown there and what it's status is.
Is this on a desktop? If so first step is to remove the drive from the enclosure and connect it directly to the PC and see if it is found also check disk management again. If not then try running testdisk as shown here in the sticky Have you "lost" a hard drive, partition or files in your computer?
Let us know the results on these and we'll go from there if not successful.

nehwilliams · 02-07-2009, 11:56 PM

The Disk does not show up in disk management.

The computer I'm using is a laptop. I ran the tests from the sticky with no results.

Thanks.

**raptor_pa** · 03-05-2009, 08:40 PM

Did testdisk identify the disk? Do you have a desktop availabale for additional testing? We need to make sure the drive is spinning and not making any noise, so if you can at least get the housing off the external drive to get a better feel and listen to the drive.

01-27-2009, 12:49 AM	#1 (permalink)
nehwilliams Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 2 OS: Vista	external hard drive no longer shows up in Vista I recently purchased a SATA Hitachi Hard Drive (320 GB) and installed it in an external USB drive enclosure. I formatted and partitioned it fine under Vista and started using it. Last week it stopped showing up as a lettered drive and it does not appear under device management. The drive gets power and it sounds like it is working but I can't get it to show up. I bought a new enclosure thinking that might be the problem. But that had no effect. I moved a lot of data to this and would like to be able to access it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

01-27-2009, 08:09 AM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,903 OS: XP	Re: external hard drive no longer shows up in Vista Check Disk management and see if the disk is shown there and what it's status is. Is this on a desktop? If so first step is to remove the drive from the enclosure and connect it directly to the PC and see if it is found also check disk management again. If not then try running testdisk as shown here in the sticky Have you "lost" a hard drive, partition or files in your computer? Let us know the results on these and we'll go from there if not successful. __________________

02-07-2009, 11:56 PM	#3 (permalink)
nehwilliams Registered User Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 2 OS: Vista	Re: external hard drive no longer shows up in Vista The Disk does not show up in disk management. The computer I'm using is a laptop. I ran the tests from the sticky with no results. Thanks.

03-05-2009, 08:40 PM	#4 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,903 OS: XP	Re: external hard drive no longer shows up in Vista Did testdisk identify the disk? Do you have a desktop availabale for additional testing? We need to make sure the drive is spinning and not making any noise, so if you can at least get the housing off the external drive to get a better feel and listen to the drive. __________________