Won't function Hello, my external hard drive isn't recognized by my computer, when I try to install the driver a list of files on the CD show up after a few seconds. The control panel says it is working properly, any ideas?

A Hitachi USB external hard drive is a device that acts as portable, removable storage for your personal computer. If you need additional space to house files on your computer but don't want to go to the trouble of installing an internal drive inside the case, a USB external hard drive is your best option. These drives are "plug and play" devices, which means that very little can actually go wrong. If you're having problems, fixing them shouldn't take more than a minute or two.

Check your connections. A USB cable needs to be connecting your Hitachi external hard drive to your computer. Your external hard drive's power cable also needs to be plugged into a functional wall outlet, surge protector, extension cord or power strip. Make sure your Hitachi USB external hard drive is turned to "On." An "On/Off" button is present on the front of the unit. If the indicator light around said button is not illuminated, the drive is "Off" and your computer won't be able to recognize it. Press it to turn it on and then try to access your drive again. Format your hard drive. If your Hitachi USB external hard drive doesn't currently have a file system on it, you won't be able to use it to store data. Open up the "Computer" icon in the "Start" menu. Right-click on your USB external hard drive's icon and click "Format." Click "Start." This will install a file system on your Hitachi USB external hard drive. After this process is finished, you will now be able to use your drive. Restart your computer. Certain models of computers (especially older models) won't recognize new hardware unless your computer boots with the hardware already connected. Leave your USB drive plugged in and restart your computer. Once you do this, your Hitachi USB external hard drive should appear as normal in the "Computer" folder with all of your other drives. Hope this helps.

External hard drives not only provide additional storage space on a computer system but also allow data to be conveniently transported from one computer to another.

These drives typically plug right in to a port on the computer and function without any additional setup; however, if you are running into trouble where your external hard drive is not being detected, you must troubleshoot the situation to determine why the drive appears to be missing.

Check the USB connection running from the hard drive to your computer.

If the USB cable is not seated securely in the port, the computer will not detect the external drive.

Disconnect the USB cable from the computer and plug it into a different USB port. Occasionally, a USB port will fail to function with some hardware and changing the USB connection may correct this issue.

Switch from a USB to a Firewire cable connection, if possible.

The USB port on the hard drive may have died; if so, changing to a Firewire connection will resolve this issue.

Install the driver for the external device from the installation disc provided with the product. Older computer systems may require you to manually install this driver.

After inserting the installation CD, follow the prompts from the installation wizard to install the driver on your computer.

Restart the computer.

If you connected the external drive while the computer is powered down, it may not recognize the device when you turn on the computer.

After restarting the computer, connect the external drive to the system.

The drive should now be detected by your operating system.

Connect the external hard drive to a power source and then plug it into your PC computer using a USB or Firewire cable.

Log on to your PC computer using an account with administrative privileges.

Open the Start menu and click on the "Control Panel" icon.

Open the "Administrative Tools" folder and then double-click on the "Computer Management" icon.

Select "Disk Management" from the list of options on left side of the window.

Right-click on the drive you want your computer to recognize and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths."

Select a drive letter for the external hard drive to be recognized as and click "OK."

The drive will now appear in My Computer.

Hope this helps.

External hard drives not only provide additional storage space on a computer system but also allow data to be conveniently transported from one computer to another.

These drives typically plug right in to a port on the computer and function without any additional setup; however, if you are running into trouble where your external hard drive is not being detected, you must troubleshoot the situation to determine why the drive appears to be missing.

Check the USB connection running from the hard drive to your computer.

If the USB cable is not seated securely in the port, the computer will not detect the external drive.

Disconnect the USB cable from the computer and plug it into a different USB port. Occasionally, a USB port will fail to function with some hardware and changing the USB connection may correct this issue.

Switch from a USB to a Firewire cable connection, if possible.

The USB port on the hard drive may have died; if so, changing to a Firewire connection will resolve this issue.

Install the driver for the external device from the installation disc provided with the product. Older computer systems may require you to manually install this driver.

After inserting the installation CD, follow the prompts from the installation wizard to install the driver on your computer.

Restart the computer.

If you connected the external drive while the computer is powered down, it may not recognize the device when you turn on the computer.

After restarting the computer, connect the external drive to the system.

The drive should now be detected by your operating system.

Connect the external hard drive to a power source and then plug it into your PC computer using a USB or Firewire cable.

Log on to your PC computer using an account with administrative privileges.

Open the Start menu and click on the "Control Panel" icon.

Open the "Administrative Tools" folder and then double-click on the "Computer Management" icon.

Select "Disk Management" from the list of options on left side of the window.

Right-click on the drive you want your computer to recognize and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths."

Select a drive letter for the external hard drive to be recognized as and click "OK."

The drive will now appear in My Computer.

Hope this helps.

If it behaves like this for multiple computers with multiple operating systems, I would think that the problem is with the hard drive or with how the files were stored. I would recommend trying a free recovery utility:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

If this does not work, there are professionals who can do this service for you however it is generally expensive.
As a last ditch effort, boot your computer from a free Ubuntu CD (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download) and see if it recognizes your files.

There are times when external drives need to be inialized and formatted before they can be recognized by a computer. There are other times when the drive letter that the external is looking for is already being used and it does not show up.
You can use the disk management utility to initialize, format or change drive letters around. You do not want to change your C drive, also usually called drive 0. Below are directions for accessing and utilizing this tool:

Right click on you "My Computer" Icon

A menu will open

Chose "Manage"

The Computer Management window will open

The Computer Management window is broken down into 3 sections.

The first section on the left side of the window shows a menu. Disk Management is on the lower portion of the menu.

The right side is separated into two sections, top and bottom. The top portion shows a list of active drives on the computer. The lower portion shows all drives connected to the computer. CD or DVD drives that have not disk will not show as active drives on the top section, but can be seen in the lower section.

The lower section will show the drive description, drive size and drive condition (online or off line) in small box on the left side of that section. Disk drives will designate a "Drive" and a number. Drive 0 is usually your internal hard drive. Then it would list drive 1, drive 2, etc, depending on how many internal and external drive sources you have connected to your computer. Then it will list your CD drives and generally show their drive letter assignments.

Next to the smaller section described above, is a larger section which shows the driver letter, size of the driver and condition (if working correctly will show "healthy")

This is the area you can right click and get a menu that will allow you to open, explore, mark the partition as active, change the driver letter, format the drive or delete a partition. (A note of caution here. Changing the driver letter on your main hard drive partition will cause windows to stop functioning. The main hard drive, or hard drive partition, is normally given the letter "C".) A hard drive may show two or more partitions with separate drive letters designated for each partition.

A drive that is having a problem may show that it needs to be formatted (status as Unformatted). This can be done from this window. An external drive, whether it is a hard drive or CD/DVD drive, can have the letter designator change done if you want to organize your external drives. There are times when a drive will not show up because the drive letter that they are programmed to use are taken. Most USB drives are programmed to us the letters "F" or "G". In this area, you can assign the USB drive any drive letter that is not being used and this will make it visible in windows.

This should get you to see your external. If you don

If you have not used the external hard drive before, you will have to go into your drive management and initialize your drive and possibly format it. The fact that your computer recognizes it is a good sign. It means that the external drive is working properly and the computer recognizes that the external drive is there. I have an short paper I have written describing how to use the drive management utility in windows. It is too long to post here. I can either post part of it or you can give me your email and I will send it as a MS word attachment so you can have the entire paper.
I hope you find this helpful Brian
Here is the part I can post here:

Using Disk Management Utility

Disk management utility will help you see all the drives that are connected to your computer, including internal hard drives, CD or DVD Drives, and removable storage like USB sticks and external hard drives. Using this utility, you can check for attached drives that are not visible in windows when attached to your computer. You can also format drives, change drive letters, mark a partition as active and delete partitions. A word on caution about using the Disk Management Utility: This utility can cause destruction of data. If you are not sure of what you are looking at and uncomfortable with using this utility you should consult with an advanced user before making any changes to drives using this utility.

Right click on you "My Computer" Icon

A menu will open

Chose "Manage"

The Computer Management window will open

The Computer Management window is broken down into 3 sections. The first section on the left side of the window shows a menu. Disk Management is on the lower portion of the menu.

The right side is separated into two sections, top and bottom. The top portion shows a list of active drives on the computer. The lower portion shows all drives connected to the computer. CD or DVD drives that have not disk will not show as active drives on the top section, but can be seen in the lower section.

The lower section will show the drive description, drive size and drive condition (online or off line) in small box on the left side of that section. Disk drives will designate a "Drive" and a number. Drive 0 is usually your internal hard drive. Then it would list drive 1, drive 2, etc, depending on how many internal and external drive sources you have connected to your computer. Then it will list your CD drives and generally show their drive letter assignments.

Next to the smaller section described above, is a larger section which shows the driver letter, size of the driver and condition (if working correctly will show "healthy")

This is the area you can right click and get a menu that will allow you to open, explore, mark the partition as active, change the driver letter, format the drive or delete a partition. (A note of caution here. Changing the driver letter on your main hard drive partition will cause windows to stop functioning. The main hard drive, or hard drive partition, is normally given the letter "C".) A hard drive may show two or more partitions with separate drive letters designated for each partition.

A drive this is having a problem may show that it needs to be formatted (status as Unformatted). This can be done from this window. An external drive, whether it is a hard drive or CD/DVD drive, can have the letter designator change done if you want to organize your external drives. There are times when a drive will not show up because the drive letter that they are programmed to use are taken.

First cehck whether your computer is able to recoznize other USB storage devices or not. If you see that it is not recoznizing other USB storage devices. Then you need go to your Boot Up screen, the screen that opens when you restart your PC.

Then go to the USB section and enable USB drive.

If this also does not resolve your problem, then try installing USB drivers on your PC, You can install them from the website : http://www.softwarepatch.com/tips/usb2-driver.html

I hope this resolves your problem.

It appears you have an external hard drive. It should connect to your computer with a USB cable. Make sure the external hard drive is turned on and running before you connect the usb cable to the computer. Some external hard drives have an on/off switch and some do not. you can hear it running if you put your ear close to the case.

When you plug it in, wait a few minutes and the computer should indicate that it has recognized it. (sometimes this does not happen) In any case, after a few minutes, open My Computer (Computer, in Windows 7) (sometimes referred to as Explorer- NOT to be confused with Windows Explorer which is an internet browser). You should see a list of recognized drives including your external hard drive. Doubler click on it and you should be able to see your files.

If it doesn't show in Explorer, the computer might be trying to assign a drive letter to it that is already taken. To fix that, go to Control panel, Administrator Tools, Computer management, Disk Management. You should see your external drive listed and you can assign an unused drive designation to it there. You should then be able to go back to Explorer and see it. You might have to refresh the Explorer screen.

Hmmm sounds like corrupt install or possibly the bad drive....or the disk you are trying to read is bad


Btw, I’m available to help over the phone in case u need at https://www.6ya.com/expert/sean_54c3a3dc48a7773c

There is a chance that the hard drive itself is at fault and the computer cannot recognize it try using it as a slave drive in computer. and use a recovery cd from boot to check it out
You could use thee ultimate boot cd (download) to check it