External Hardrive Problems!!

My 500GB Seagate External Hardrive is just refusing to show up on my laptop!! 

Anyone know how to fix this very annoying problem?

Have you tried another USB device? If that does not show it may be the USB drivers on the Laptop.

Yeah I have and they all work bar the harddrive.

Can be a complaint sometimes that the USB driven externals sit down. Is it independant or self supplied

Maybe try it in a different usb port or another PC. Those things can break pretty easy, hopefully that's not the case.

Does the Hard Drive power up? Just a thought.

I had a problem with mine, and it was the fuse in the Plug. Long story about the plug, but that was the problem.

Does it show up as a drive or device on "My Computer"?

It could be the Seagate driver it just sounds like its not being recognized. What OS are you running?

Paudie being a fussy fecker!!!

Don't invest in an external hard drive unless its an expensive one. The cheap ones don't last long. Their so fragile its beyond belief. 

Paudie being a fussy fecker!!!

Don't invest in an external hard drive unless its an expensive one. The cheap ones don't last long. Their so fragile its beyond belief. 

Depends on the manufacturer.   For the most part the HD's can take a bit of abuse but like anything it depends on what you do with it. If your concerned about reliability and how fragile it is, get an SSD.  Solid State Drives are tough as balls and have no moving parts. They use flash type memory.

The WD MyBooks are a bit shaky and they have horrible bundled software which installs on your PC which you MUST use in order to use it.  The onboard software is confusing and hard to use.

I got an Iomega Prestige.  Solid construction, brushed aluminum and its a simple plug and play w/ no software install.  Plug it into your USB and it shows up as an extra drive in your device manager/  Just copy or drag and drop to it and thats it. I used mine for over ayear and never had an Issue.

Never had a problem with the Western Digital's.  Can't comment on the PC software but the Mac stuff, especially with the password protection is pretty good and doesn't really get in the way.

Did we ever get to the bottom of this problem?  Sometimes external's don't mount correctly on the desktop, but if you use something like Disk Utility you can usually see them there and then mount them.

Never had a problem with the Western Digital's.  Can't comment on the PC software but the Mac stuff, especially with the password protection is pretty good and doesn't really get in the way.

Did we ever get to the bottom of this problem?  Sometimes external's don't mount correctly on the desktop, but if you use something like Disk Utility you can usually see them there and then mount them.

Saw you were talking about your WD and password protection.

Wondered how long it would take you to use the word 'mount'.

If your still having issues. Go to Seagate and download the device driver. It could be the Driver on the HD is corrupt.