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General discussion

1TB USB Seagate drive not recognized

Oct 1, 2009 11:39AM PDT

i had a problem with a 1tb seagate drive. i sent it in for a replacement. i opted for a rosewill usb external housing. win xp found it and installed it saying new hardware is ready to use. it does not appear under my computer anywhere. the device manager shows the drive and ids it exactly. i can remove it and reinstall it and each time it says ready to use. should i connect it to the pc via sata cable and format it and then put it the usb housing? any thoughts on this? pc is hp media center with AMD dual core 1.6 processor. in the device manager i can ask it to populate and it shows near 1tb capacity with all of it usable. it just wont assign a drive letter. i went to command promt and diskpart then list volume [its not there].

Discussion is locked

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Sounds defective.
Oct 1, 2009 12:15PM PDT

if you can't partition and format it with windows disk or drive management call it in for exchange. No, I've never had to move it to sata to format it.
Bob

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this is a newly receive drive from seagate
Oct 1, 2009 12:30PM PDT

seems seagate has had numerous problems with this series drive. i received my exchange drive today. it came directly from the anti static bag to the just arrived today usb external housing, i guess it could be defective.

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One last check.
Oct 1, 2009 12:44PM PDT

You are using the disk/drive management feature of XP or Vista to partition, format the drive? I'm running into folk that never thought they had to use that.
Bob

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add me to that bunch of folks
Oct 1, 2009 1:02PM PDT

after i initialized the drive everything is functioning as expected. it allowed me to mount the drive and assign a letter. formatting is taking a lot of time, but the drive is huge.

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Next time. Use the "Quick Format."
Oct 1, 2009 8:11PM PDT

You can use CHKDSK or similar later.

Glad it was the usual blank drive that needed setup.
Bob

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thanks bob you were right on as usual
Oct 1, 2009 10:19PM PDT

cnet forum staff are so good. thanks a lot.