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Question

Installing Portable Hard Drive

Sep 24, 2013 11:10PM PDT

I thought at first that my older drive had just quit... so I bought a new Seagate b/u drive... and the computer recognizes it as the old drive and will NOT let me access it! How does one delete whatever is causing this so I can use the new one?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
That's uncommon.
Sep 24, 2013 11:24PM PDT

External hard drives, like USB-sticks, should be plug and play. I'd go into DIsk Management, and see if you can repartition it or rename the volume name or so.

Kees

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Installing Portable Hard Drive
Sep 25, 2013 4:06PM PDT

The plug/play option works after new start... but it refuses to allow me access to the drive it has recognized! Would this have anything to do with the CMOS battery I replaced last month???? Just very frustrating... all the portable drives work as normal on my laptop... but I want one of them on the PC for my iTunes libraries... HELP!!!

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(NT) So is this an iTunes issue only?
Sep 25, 2013 5:35PM PDT
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Not iTunes issue
Sep 25, 2013 11:46PM PDT

The drives are recognized under the "Computer" tab... yet will not allow me to access them. I went into Safe Mode and it allowed me from the C Prompt to format the external drive... yet in normal windows mode it allows me no access. Any ideas????

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Strange.
Sep 26, 2013 5:57AM PDT

Now go into Disk Management (if necessary in Safe Mode) and delete and recreate the partition(s) on that drive. That's more than formatting.

If the drive still doesn't allow access after that, try on another PC. What happens there?

Kees

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Installing Portable Hard Drive
Sep 26, 2013 3:24PM PDT

It works with no problem on my laptop! Very frustrating trying to solve this...

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Answer
Wild guess.
Sep 26, 2013 3:29PM PDT

In Disk Management change the drive letter of this drive (on the computer that it doesn't work on.)

Sorry if I don't deep dive into USB identifiers and why we try this.
Bob