Question : Problem: Cant see portable hard drive in windows explorer

I have a number of issues when trying to backup a laptop using a portable hard disk drive. I have a seagate 400gig portable hard drive which I have used before on both my laptop and main pc with no problems. The current issues are;

1. When I plug the USB portable hard drive into the laptop windows picks up and tells me all is well and the new hardware is installed and ready for use. The problem is when I look in windows explorer I cant see the hard drive. In the past it was there but now for some reason it can seem to see it even though it seems to have installed. I have checked device manager and cant see any problems with any USB devices.

2. To test things I plug the hard drive into the main pc. No problem It can see it and I can explore it. The problem is when I try to stop using 'safely remove hardware'. I get and error message "Device cannot be stopped right now - please try again later". So basically I have to power down the hard drive using its on/off button. The problem here is by doing this it freezes both my wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse on the main pc and therefore I have to either plug another keyboard and mouse in or just reboot the machine by turning the power off - argh !

So the question is why cant the laptop see the hard drive (when it has in the past) and why can I not stop the hard drive once plugged into the main pc?

Anybody any ideas?

Dave
 

Answer : Problem: Cant see portable hard drive in windows explorer

You might find that if you go in to disk management in computer management all you need to do is assign a drive letter to your disk. Right-click the partition, change drive letter (or it might say assign letter - can't remember!) and pick a letter. This often happens on my external maxtor drive, don't know why, but this always fixes it. Good luck!