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General discussion

External HDD not recognized

Feb 11, 2006 8:00AM PST

I recently purchased a Maxtor HDD to store photographs and home dvds of my grandchildren. I am trying to install it on a Dell Inspiron laptop with XP home and Service Pack I. When I go into My Computer, no new hardware is recognized. I went to the Maxtor web site and downloaded Maxblast etc., but it thinks I have Norton GoBack enabled (I had disabled it). The DHH is connected by a USB port, so I could avoid jumpers etc. Now what do I try? Thanks, r2sanford

Discussion is locked

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Go to
Feb 12, 2006 10:18AM PST

Start
Settings
Control Panel
Admin Tool
Compuer Management
Disk Management

See the drive

Probably needs to be partitioned/Formatted.

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Go To (for formatting external HDD)
Feb 12, 2006 11:17PM PST

I have gone to this site. I know the drive needs to be formatted, but I cannot find a way to do this after disk management. My directions said that at this time I'd see another drive that needs to be formatted, but all I see is the "C" and "D" drives. So, now what do I do? Thanks. r2sanford

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Get the laptop up and running .....without the external HDD
Feb 13, 2006 3:26AM PST

connected. Then power on the external HDD....once that's up and running . . then plug the USB cable from the hard drive to the laptop. See if you get any messages re 'found new device'.

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External HDD difficulties
Feb 13, 2006 3:58AM PST

Thank you. I'll try this when I get home from work.
r2sanford

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external HDD not recognized
Feb 13, 2006 10:32AM PST

I tried your suggestion, but it did not work. Thank you for trying to help. If you have other suggestions, I'll try them, too.
r2sanford

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(NT) (NT) Have the latest Windows XP Service Packs ???
Feb 13, 2006 10:47AM PST