ext drive not showing up

[redvette]

Hi Gang

I have a 250G WD external I use for back up. I have not used it until I found a good back up program, now that I have one I plug in the USB connection on the computer, for the ext. and it makes the sound but it don't show up. And when I turn it off or unplug it, there is a sound again. I looked under device manager and it is there. How can I get it to show up when I right click on my computer icon.

I have XP home and IE 7. I have not installed my back up program yet, not being able to see the ext yet.

Thanx...Gunny

[rwest]

Is the drive new? Has it been formatted? If so the format may not be the same as the format of the current OS. If it's new it may not even have the first partition set up.

[redvette]

rwest...what I actually did was when I first got it I plugged it into a USB port, to see if it showed up, it did it came up with a letter H. So I tried one program with it and to see how it worked I downloaded a few things, then seeing that they did transfer I reformatted it, (the ext) so when I got the program I like I would be good to go. I turned it off, and unplugged it. Now that I have the back up program I want to use, I plugged in the ext and here I am. Like I said it shows up in device manager, and by all sights and sounds it should be working. But not so.

Thanx....Gunny

[amdalex]

http://www.pcmech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=175212

[redvette]

AMD

You are right on, I did as the instrutions said and it did assign a letter to it. I am formatting it now and when that is done I will be good to go. You know I read that before I posted here, but I did not stop and read it I guess my mind was some where else. Thanx..

Thanx....Gunny