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General discussion

Windows XP does not recognize external USB drive

Jun 29, 2006 1:37PM PDT

I have a small 2.5 inch 80GB hard drive (Fujitsu MHV2080AH) and I got a "no name" brand HDD USB enclosure for it. I have to use to USB ports due to power requirements for the drive.
It was working fine until recently. When I plug it into my notebook, it will detect the drive but it wont assign it a drive letter so I can't access it.

I went to the control panel -> Admin tools -> Computer management -> Disk management to initialize the disk but it won't initialize and it only recognize the drive as a 7.6GB hard drive.

I think the problem might be the way WinXP recognizes the drive. In the device manager, its saying my drive is a MTH2080AH instead of the MHV2080AH. I tried uninstalling itand rescanning for new hardware but when WinXP detects it....it always detects the MTH2080AH.....

Discussion is locked

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Service Pack 2 installed?
Jun 29, 2006 9:27PM PDT

I found issues with XP, XP SP1 and USB.

You may find it possible to use some other machine to test if the drive is still good.

Bob

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yes....I have SP2 installed...
Jun 30, 2006 9:24AM PDT

I've already tried 2 different machines....both of which has SP2 and all current updates. I was able to ''initialize'' the disk after turning off and turning back on the drive many many times but now it only recognizes 7.65GB out of the 80GB. So when I tried to create a partition, it only lets me create a 7.65 primary partition.

I also noticed that it still recognizes it as a ''DUHITSU MHT2080AH USB Drive'' <--''Duhitsu'' is not a typo...its suppose to be ''Fujitsu'' but for some reason WindowsXP recogizes as ''Duhitsu''....

I've scanned for viruses and spyware...nothing found......