New WD External HD Not Always Showing Up

Two questions, though: Should I have any of the external drives (new or old) connected when I do so? And if something is detected, should I allow it to do what it suggests to do?

Thanks again.

I doubt you will get any choices about it. Whatever you want recognized, you should have plugged in before doing it.

The new one seems to be recognized, but only if only one of the other three aren't connected.

I've decided to copy the other things back to the original drive, wipe the new one, and return it. If I can't trust it to work, I can't trust it for a long-term solution.

Thanks for your help.

if this is on a 32 bit MBR system and each physical drive is set as a primary drive (partition) instead of logical volume sets in an extended partition, windows just might not recognize it, although I thought that was per disk and not in total. I've never run into that situation exactly before using so many USB drives. Be interesting test to plug in 4-5 flashdrives in to USB plugs and see what happens, maybe I'll try that later on.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750198.aspx

Note To summarize, you can have as many as four primary partitions on a hard disk. If you have an extended partition on the disk, you can have up to three primary partitions. If the disk does not contain the system partition, you do not need to create any primary partitions. You can use the entire hard disk as an extended partition, and create as many logical drives within it as you want to have.

Windows NT requires that the system partition be a primary partition.

Some computers create an EISA configuration partition as the first primary partition on the hard disk. On these computers, you can only have three other primary partitions on the disk, or two primary partitions and one extended partition.

You create a volume set by combining multiple areas of free space on one or more hard disks into a single logical disk. When you create a volume set, Windows NT uses the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \DISK Registry subkey to access the areas on the disk(s) that are part of the volume set.

A volume set can be made from:

Free space on multiple disks.

Multiple areas of free space on one disk.

Multiple areas of free space on multiple disks.

You use Disk Administrator to create and extend volume sets. See Disk Administrator Help for information about creating volume sets.

Each volume set can include up to 32 areas of free space from one or more physical disks. When creating a volume set, the free space can be an unallocated area within an extended partition, or an unpartitioned area elsewhere on the disk. Figure 17.4 shows a volume set E, which is made up of two areas in the extended partition on disk 0. Figure 17.4 also shows the two different types of free space. The free space between drives E and L is unallocated space in an extended partition. The free space at the right side of the screen shot is unpartitioned space.

You cannot use volume sets to avoid the limit of four Partition Table entries for a disk. For example, the Disk Administrator screen shot in Figure 17.4 shows three primary partitions (drives C, D, and L) and one extended partition. The free space between the second part of volume set E and the primary partition L is part of the extended partition. It can be used to create one or more logical drives in the extended partition. However, the free space to the right of primary partition L is wasted disk space, because there are already three primary partitions and an extended partition.

You can tell whether free space is unallocated space in an extended partition or is unpartitioned space, because the diagonal lines go in different directions for the two types of free space.

I have already done an exchange on the drive for another WD 3 TB. When I'm ready to set that one up, I'll keep this advice in mind.

Thanks again.