SimpleTech Signature Mini 160GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive - Dark Blue Blueberry - Answered Questions & Fixed issues

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did you try different usb ports?

Go to recycle bin and restore.

try to plug it at the back of your desktop...

Plug the external hard drive into your laptop or desktop computer.

Most external hard drives do this through a cable connecting the hard drive to the USB outlet on a computer.

Plug your external hard drive into a wall outlet if it receives power from an AC adapter rather than your computer.

Click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, and open the external hard drive.

It will be located under the USB connecting drive, which is labeled with a letter ranging from "E:" to "K:".

Open the folder on your external hard drive where you would like to save the photographs.

usually in my documents my pictures or if you want to save them to a specific spot so as not get them mixed up.

Create a folder if one is not present right click in my documents select new folder and name it lets say my pics 1

Move this window to the bottom right corner of your screen to be used in future steps.

Open the folder on your home computer where the files are being stored that you wish to transfer to the external hard drive.

These may be on the desktop, in "My Documents" or elsewhere in your computer.

If you are unsure where they are located, you can always search for them by file name by going to "Start" then "Search."

Right-click on the photo file, and select "Cut."

Click on the window showing your hard drive files to bring it into use on the screen.

Right-click on the white space in the window where you would like to transfer the files, and select "Paste."

Your files have now been deleted from their original location and transferred to your external hard drive in the folder you selected

hope this helps

make sure the lead/s that attach to your hard drive are securely seated if your computer came with a motherboard disc the drivers could be on it click start control panel administration tools computer management device manager look through all of your devices if you see a yellow question mark?or exclamation mark ! or red x right click to reinstall drivers or if you can see your usb but its not working ports(com&lpt)right click update driver hope this helps

click start control panel administration tools computer management device manager look through all of your devices if you see a yellow question mark?or exclamation mark ! or red xright click to reinstall drivers or

if you can see your usb but its not workingports(com&lpt)right click update driver

sometimes the wires inside the cable will be damaged due to bending or stretching or placing heavy equipment upon the cable

just replace the cable of the hard disk, when you plugged the external disk drive you got that windows could recognize the USB device change the cable everything should work fine again,

check the USB leads that attach to the motherboard usually red-white-green-black make sure they are securely seated and have no dust build up on them dust will cause static and a lot of unforeseen problems

if this fails to fix the problem you might have to install a usb 2 or 3 card they are cheap and easy to install you can buy these on Ebay very cheap if you need help obtaining the usb card post a reply hope this helps

Try to reformat the driver using your computer to resolve the problem...after reformatting it...try re-plug it again to the usb port. If the notification still exist...that will be version incompatibility...you need to update the usb port driver...
Go to the website of the motherboard name and download the new updated version of the usb driver...If your motherboard is msi...go to msi website...something like that

Check the health of your drive with http://www.hdsentinel.com/

If it checks out ok try to save your data with http://www.piriform.com/recuva

If you need data recovery help this guy does it remotely and works off of donations http://FreeDataRecovery.us

Last hope attempt: dismantle the casing and extract the actual disk from inside it; put it in a desktop and see if it's recognized there. If even that fails then the disk is dead, time for a new one.

I have the same exact hard drive. At times, it can be detected. Sometimes, it can not.
Try to get another usb cable and wait a little longer for it to be recognized by the computer.
I waited for about 10 minutes before I can get access to my files.

You are using the correct connection, the external power supply is powering the drive, so the USB cable is just handling data. I believe the message may be telling you that you will get faster performance using a USB 2.0 connection, it is probably sensing that your computer's USB port is USB 1.1.

It could be a couple issues. The Signature Mini ships with FAT32, and the file size limitation is 4GB, so if you are trying to copy files larger than this, it could be an issue. Another possibility is that the drive is formatted NTFS, which the Mac can read OK, but cannot write to it. If you want to use the drive cross-platform, then you might want to set it up for cross-platform use. p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } To format the drive for cross-platform use, make sure that you have backed up all your data from the drive as formatting will destroy any data on the drive. First, connect the drive to your Mac, and open Disk Utility. Then select your drive on the left side of the window and choose the Partition Tab. Then change the Current Partition drop-down menu to 1 partition and click on the Options button. A new window will appear where you will choose Master Boot Record (MBR), then click OK. Then choose Free Space from the Format drop-down menu, click Apply, then OK. Your drive will now appear unformatted. Then choose the Erase tab, choose FAT32 as the Format, name your drive (you will be limited to 11 characters), and click Erase, then OK. Your drive will then appear on the desktop formatted for cross-platform use, and you can copy the data you need to move to your PC and then connect the drive to your PC.

You might try a different cable or use a USB "Y" cable to supply enough powere for the drive to work, as some computers have difficulty providing enough power from a single port. If you need more help, please call HitachiGST Tech Support M-F 8AM to 6PM PST at 1.888.426.5214 and a technician will be happy to help you.

Yes, it is a "plug-and-play" device, and Apple OS X supports such P&P devices.

> showing a time bar

That might have been the "autoplay" function, looking at the files, trying to inventory the files,
to see if it should run a program, or open a program to view photos, or open Windows Media Player to view audio/video content.

An external storage-device has four major components:

* the USB cable

* the power-adapter

* the disk-drive inside the enclosure

* the USB-to-disk-drive adapter inside the enclosure.

One of these components has failed.

Try a different USB cable.

Try connecting to a different USB port on your computer.

Try connecting to a USB port on a different computer.

Take a "multi-meter" and measure both the voltage and amperage output from the AC adapter, and compare with the specifications on the label on the adapter.

Open the enclosure, and remove the disk-drive, and then connect it as a "slave" disk-drive in a desktop computer, to see if it works at all.

Purchase a new, compatible, disk-drive, and install it in the enclosure, to "revive" your external storage device.

Get the part-number and serial-number from the label on your disk-drive, and access the manufacturer's web-site, and use "check warranty status", to see if they will replace the device, at minimal cost to you.

There exist commercial "data recovery" services that can try to repair your device, just long-enough to rescue and copy your files.
For example, see: https://services.seagate.com/index.aspx?lng=en-US for a "no data - no charge guarantee".

Hello

Okay , so there are some steps to figure out what is wrong with your external.

Firstly , if your computer makes a sound when you plug in your external , go to Start-Control Panel-Administrative Tools-Computer Management-Disk Management , and see if your external drive is listed here with your local drives. If it is listed , right click on the drive and change the drive letter to make it appear in "my computer".

If your drive does not make a connection sound when connecting to your computer and also does not show up , please follow the next step.

Remove the hard drive from the casing if possible and install it in your computer case or another external case.If the drive works , the problem is with the casing and you can ignore the drive.

Now , if the problem is with the casing , there are still 3 possibilities.

1. The USB cable between the drive and the computer may be damaged.
2. The circuit board which connects your drive to the interface of the external may be blown.
3. The power supply (if applicable) may have a blown transformer.

The latter is the easiest to diagnose , does your external light up at all when you plug in the power? If not , then this is probably your problem. On the bottom of the adapter is a label which you will be able to use to have a new adapter made at your local electronics shop and this will cost about $30 max. They will also be able to test the adapter with a clamp meter to see if this is really the problem and this should be free.

The second component you want to test is the USB cable. If you have a printer , swop out the cables and see if your printer functions normally. Most externals use the same connector so you should be able to test it in this manner. If the cable works go on to the last step. If the cable is defective , replace it with a new one which you can find for about $10 at most electronics and chain stores.

The last component to test is the circuit board. This is a bit of a grey zone as you probably won't be able to spot the blown component unless it failed really badly. With the casing already opened , locate the external's circuit board and check to see if you have any blackened components or fluids leaking from some components. If all the other components of the external worked perfectly , then this is the faulty part. It is not really economical to replace the circuit as most of the time it is out of production by the time you need to replace it and it still costs a lot even if it is available so if your drive is working perfectly when connected via sata or IDE on your computer , the best is to buy a new casing and place your old drive in the new casing.

A casing costs about $50 and you could get it at most tech shops and big chain stores like Best Buy.

I hope this solves your problem and please reply if you need more help.

Kind Regards
Andrea

Connect it either to a Mac or to a PC, and then "format" the drive, to completely "clear" it out.

These things come formatted for PCs--you have to go into Utilities on your mac (in hard drive click on Applications, Utilities folder, then Disk Utility, then click on the simpletech (that has the gb next to it), click on the drop down to change the format (MS-DOS if you want to read on both PCs and MAC, but MAC-OS for just Macs) re-name it on the drop down below that, then click on erase and then it's re-formatted.

Probably not the right answer for your problem. Mine is an external 1 TB Simple Drive. Mine wouldn't respond at all. I unplugged the power cable from the back of the hard drive and replugged it in and instantly it worked (with the computer and hard drive plugged in). I had tried rebooting the computer, plugging/unplugging over and over into the computer and that didn't work.

Hello,

Blah, stupid question about this folder, of course you can't.
If you have such possibility. The easiest sollution and almost guarantee it will work.

Copy all files from this ext HDD on your local pc and just format this HDD using windows formatting tool (right click on this HDD in my computer -> Format...)

pick NTFS of course

Cheers,
Mike

Leave rate if I helped you, thanks!!