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Question

External Hard Drive Does not Work on Old PC

Apr 12, 2012 12:25AM PDT

I have 2 external hard drives and after a trip away they do not work on my old desktop PC. They work on my laptop and any other machine I try. I reason I think it because my old pc is very old. I'd like to get the data off its hard drives(I never could get network cable to work).Other USB devices like mp3 and sticks work

My computer-Running XP pro

USB: 1.1
CPU:750 MHz, AMD Athlon
RAM 768MB SDRAM
Motherboard - AMD 750, GA-7IXE4
FSB: 200MHz

The hard drives: One is relatively new, a seagate 500GB, the other some old Freecom 250GB/music player. Neither work in this machine altought the power works for the machines when you connect them.

They also dont show up under disk management via ctrl panel.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
How are these powered?
Apr 12, 2012 12:31AM PDT

USB powered drives do this all the time. The fact they work on other machines means the fault/issue is with this PC but you didn't tell how the devices get power.

If from USB, be sure to use one of those USB Y power cables.
Bob

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RE
Apr 12, 2012 2:40AM PDT

The seagate is usb powered, the older one off the mains.

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Then the other thing.
Apr 12, 2012 2:46AM PDT

The USB powered one would be best with the Y USB cable.

The other one may not work on USB 1.1. I know that it's supposed to but after encountering this too many times, it sometimes does not. And why I install USB 2.0 cards.
Bob