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External USB HD Dock shows up in USB, not as drive

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Undah

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Can anyone help?

I got a new Rosewill USB external HD dock and a samsung 1tb drive.

When installed, and hooked up to the Vista laptop, it shows up as something hooked up to the computer. In 'My Computer', nothing shows up as a drive. There is no way to find the drive.

It's brand-new, is it a bad drive?
 
Are you saying it doesn't show up in Windows Disk Management utility? Of course, as has already been pointed out, the drive won't show as a drive letter until you actually partition and format it.

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How do you do this? I can't even find the drive. When it's hooked up with the USB drive, the computer acknowledges that something is hooked up, but the drive is not visible.

With the USB drive hooked up without the drive, nothing shows up at all, so I know something is happening.

I tried going through the BIOS, but there's nothing to access.
Tony Jacobs said:
Have you initialised and formatted the disk? It will not appear in explorer until you do.
Click to expand...
 
You need to partition and format the drive using eSATA or firewire connection using disk manager. USB is not capable of partitioning and formatting new drives.
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Retired commercial photog - enjoying shooting for myself again.
Hoping to see/shoot as much as I can before the eyes and legs gives way

WOW you were able to do that without photoshop!!!!
 
I assume Vista is the same, but for XP, go into Windows Disk Management (I usually get there by right clicking on "My Computer", then clicking "Manage", and "Disk Management" will be there under "Storage", though there are many ways to get there). Then you can create a primary partition the entire size of the new hard drive, then format that partition (you probably want NTFS). I think the format also assigns a drive letter, but if not, then the last step would be to assign a drive letter to the new formatted partition. That's all there is to it: Pretty simple.

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The cradle only has USB, no other way to connect it to the computer.

I can't imagine a device would be sold with such a flaw that you cannot use a new harddrive with it.
D W said:
You need to partition and format the drive using eSATA or firewire connection using disk manager. USB is not capable of partitioning and formatting new drives.
--
Retired commercial photog - enjoying shooting for myself again.
Hoping to see/shoot as much as I can before the eyes and legs gives way

WOW you were able to do that without photoshop!!!!
Click to expand...
 
I'll try again, but don't recall seeing anything like this in vista.
Eric Carlson said:
I assume Vista is the same, but for XP, go into Windows Disk Management (I usually get there by right clicking on "My Computer", then clicking "Manage", and "Disk Management" will be there under "Storage", though there are many ways to get there). Then you can create a primary partition the entire size of the new hard drive, then format that partition (you probably want NTFS). I think the format also assigns a drive letter, but if not, then the last step would be to assign a drive letter to the new formatted partition. That's all there is to it: Pretty simple.
Click to expand...
 
Control Panel --> System and Maintenance --> Administrative tasks --> Create and format hard disk partitions
Andrew
 
Undah said:
Can anyone help?

I got a new Rosewill USB external HD dock and a samsung 1tb drive.

When installed, and hooked up to the Vista laptop, it shows up as something hooked up to the computer. In 'My Computer', nothing shows up as a drive. There is no way to find the drive.

It's brand-new, is it a bad drive?
Click to expand...
Hi,

Go to Control panel-Administrative Tools-Computer Management-Disk Management. See if you can see it there. If you can see it there, check what letter is assigned to it and make sure no other disk has the same letter. If you have two disks with the same letter, you have to reassign one to another letter. If you do not see your new drive in Disk Management, maybe your drive require some driver to be installed. Also have you tried to connect new drive strait to the computer.

--
Best regards
 
Thanks to all who contributed in helping me find a solution.

In vista, going to :

Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management

did the trick! Formatting took all night, but now the drive has a name, and it's working!

You fine people are the reason I return to these forums! Thank you.
 
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