Hmm. then it sounds like it may have gotten corupt. You didnt unplug it while it was in use did you. This can damage the file system and make the hard drive un-usable. have you tried it on any other computer? If no other computer can detect it either then that means you probably lost whatever is on it because the file system got screwed up and cant access anything.
Try it on another computer, if it doesnt work, then we know its toast and we can try booting into the windows install cd on boot and using the windows installer to re-partition it.
If this is the case, let me know and we can do that. To do it, you have to do this:
1: Plug in the hard drive, put your windows XP disk into the CD drive and boot from CD on start up. ( just like installing windows)
2: After the blue screen loads and has some options, go to install windows and it should show your laptops hard drive and the external hard drive.
3: Be sure to select to delete and re create partion on the External hard drive. NOT C: Drive as this is your laptop hard drive.
It will ask if you want to create NTFS or FAT32. Select NTFS.
4: When its done it will be a empty partion and will go back and ask if you want to install windows again. Cancel out of the windows installtion and reboot the computer, when windows loads you should be able to go into MY COMPUTER and see it now.
It will be like brand new and all data will be gone, this is because windows had to format it before re-creating a partition.
This is if you are sure you cant get access to it at all from any computer and have no hope of recovering the data thats on it at all.
If you feel you want to try other methods first, by all means go for it.
I have had to do this at my job with alot of teacher PIN drives and USB thumb Drives because they pull them out while there transfering files and corupt the file system on them.
Let me know
First of all, The shortcut only works if its connected and if its assighned a different port, then it wont work, so just go ahead and delete that for now.
Right click on " My Computer " and select " Manage" When that opens, select " Disk Management " and on the right side it will show all storage devices such as any plugged in pin drives or network drives or external hard drives.
You should see it there and it has a letter attached to it. I.E. C: for your main hard drive, A: for floppy if you have one, D: is normaly the CD Drive.
Depending on what you have or if your on a network, you should see your hard drive, probably as E: or something different.
If you have had alot of different storage devices connected or network drives, it could be that the drive letter its trying to give your Hard drive has already been issued to something else.
on the right, select the external drive ( be sure thats it, dont go changing you C: drive by mistake )
right click and select ( Change Drive letter )
Then change it to something you know isnt in use like Z: or W:
apply, close and windows should recognize the drive and you should have access to it.
If not, come back and we can go from there.
Plug your Iomega hard drive into one of your computer's USB port.
Click the "Start" button and go to the "Run" field. Type "Devmgmt.msc" into the Run box and press the "Enter" key.
Go down to the bottom of the device manager to the "Universal Serial Bus Controller."
Click on the little + (plus) sign to expand it. Look for an entry with a yellow exclamation point and click on it. Click the "Install the software automatically (Recommended)" button and then click the "Next" button.
Click the "Finish" button when the installation has finished. Go to the "My Computer" folder from your "Start" menu and locate the Iomega hard drive icon. Double click the icon to gain access to the external hard drive.
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i followed the instructions that you gave to me previously but in the right hand column it only listed my (C:) drive is there anything else i could please.
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