unrecognized drive

M

mp

I am running win7 with 2 internal drives, I plugged in 2 usb external hdd,
the device manager recognizes both but only the first is showing in the file
explorer. any suggestions to get it recognized?
thanks
mark
 
K

Ken

mp said:
I am running win7 with 2 internal drives, I plugged in 2 usb external hdd,
the device manager recognizes both but only the first is showing in the file
explorer. any suggestions to get it recognized?
thanks
mark
Click to expand...

Is the unrecognized drive partitioned and formatted?
 
M

mp

Ken said:
Is the unrecognized drive partitioned and formatted?
Click to expand...

I'd assume yes but will check(asking for a friend actually) ... it is
recognized by device mgr just not explorer so I think that would indicate
formatted but not sure...I think the guy is not totally stupid so I'm
assuming it's a yes, but have passed the q back to him.
Thanks for responding

Is there a limit to external mem on win 7 or might he be running up against
some threshold???
 
M

mp

also i'm not sure about mem liimits
win 7 home prem says 16gb...
is that ram or hard drive?
 
Z

Zaphod Beeblebrox

mp said:
I'd assume yes but will check(asking for a friend actually) ... it
is recognized by device mgr just not explorer so I think that would
indicate formatted but not sure...I
Click to expand...

Device manager seeing it just means that the hardware is present and
recognized. Does disk manager see it? If so, and Explorer doesn't,
then it is probably not partitioned (or Windows doesn't recognize the
partition type). Disk manager will let you partition and format the
drive so while you are in there you can take care of that if needed.
 
P

Paul

mp said:
also i'm not sure about mem liimits
win 7 home prem says 16gb...
is that ram or hard drive?
Click to expand...

The 16GB is RAM, the five inch long memory sticks sitting in sockets
inside the computer. In this example, you could fit four of the
4GB memory DIMMs for a total of 16GB of memory.

http://www.iamxtreme.net/andre/P5K3-D/5.jpg

Examples of DIMMs to fit sockets like that.

http://www.iamxtreme.net/andre/P5K3-D/15.jpg

*******

For disk storage (2.5", 3.5" hard drives, or SSD drives for that matter),
I would think you could use as many 2TB drives as you wanted. 2TB
is a convenient limit, if you need to "boot" the computer. I think
for "data only" hard drives, you can use larger drives than that,
but they use GPT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table (for those really big drives)

If you have the appropriate kind of BIOS on the motherboard, you can
even boot with a GPT disk. But the devil is in the details. Stopping
at 2TB for each hard drive, is to ensure it'll be bootable without
looking too hard at the details.

With a 2TB drive and a reasonably modern motherboard (i.e. a motherboard
modern enough to be using a copy of Windows 7 on it in the first place),
you should be able to boot and work with 2TB.

*******

A shortcut to Disk Management, is to try typing "diskmgmt.msc" in the
Start thingy. Try right clicking and "Run as Administrator" when the
search finds that entry. You can add partitions, by clicking on a
new disk showing in here.

http://www.vistax64.com/attachments...ll-three-partitions-vista-disk_management.jpg

Paul
 
M

mp

the drives are partitioned and either one works by itself, but not when both
are plugged in
thanks for the responses
 
A

Allen Drake

the drives are partitioned and either one works by itself, but not when both
are plugged in
thanks for the responses
Click to expand...
Try different USB ports. Plug one in at a time. Then try different
ports. Try booting with them both plugged in.
 
D

Dave \Crash\ Dummy

mp said:
the drives are partitioned and either one works by itself, but not
when both are plugged in thanks for the responses
Click to expand...

Are they using the same drive letter? Try assigning different drive
letters when you have them installed separately, then try both at once.
 
G

GlowingBlueMist

the drives are partitioned and either one works by itself, but not when both
are plugged in
thanks for the responses
Click to expand...
Like Allen suggests, try the drives one-at-a-time to verify both will
work when connected to the same USB port.

Ask your friend if the drives are being powered from the USB port or if
they have an external power source of some kind. If one or both are
powered from the USB port then it sounds like it/they are drawing more
power than the existing USB power supply is willing to offer. I have
had USB powered hard drives work initially but after they age they
sometimes draw more power. Sometimes a USB Y-cable can be used to draw
power from two USB ports and feed the device. A few hard drives even
come with such a cable as their manufacturers had already identified
their power draw was above the individual USB port specifications.

If a USB hub is involved, is it being externally powered or are all USB
hub ports drawing power from one USB port of the PC? Unpowered USB hubs
tend to cause problems with devices trying to be powered from them as
the total power draw of all the USB ports are being supplied from the
single USB port of the PC it is plugged into. Exceed the power draw of
the PC's USB port and almost any failure can show up, including symptoms
like your friend has.
 
R

R. C. White

Hi, Mark.

As the others said, Control Panel/Device Manager handles the physical
support of the disk drives. Disk Management is the program to manage those
drives; it handles creating, formatting and deleting partitions, and
assigning "drive" letters to them.

As Paul said, the quickest way to start Disk Management is to click the
Start orb (or press the Windows logo key) and just type "diskmgmt.msc" (with
or without the quotes) and press <Enter>. (You'll need to furnish
Administrator credentials because this program is powerful enough to cause
problems if used carelessly, but normal care is all that is required.)

In addition to HDDs, Disk Management also manages just about anything that
can be assigned a "drive" letter, including USB external or flash drives,
CD/DVD drives, camera memory (SD) cards, etc.

When we plug in a new flash drive or other device, Windows generally assigns
it the next available letter. But if we use Disk Management to assign the
letter of our choice, it will try to use that same letter each time that
device is removed and re-inserted.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
[email protected]
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"mp" wrote in message
I am running win7 with 2 internal drives, I plugged in 2 usb external hdd,
the device manager recognizes both but only the first is showing in the file
explorer. any suggestions to get it recognized?
thanks
mark
 
M

mp

also good points
I'll pass them on
Thanks everyone for all your suggestions
mark
 
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