How do i get external hard drives to work?

Well i had a virus ruin my copy of xp so i decided to try 7. And i must say i love it.

But i have a external hard drive that i have backed everything up to. And i cant get 7 to see it. I was using eSATA and even tried usb, but neither worked. The usb works as it sees my iphone, but i cant seem to figure out how to get the rest to work.

Any ideas?

Hi imper and Welcome to the Forum!!

Any external hard drives I've used always just worked when I plugged them in... maybe Win 7 isn't detecting it because it doesn't have that specific model in it's library of devices..? Or maybe it can't find the right driver's to get the drive up and running... I'd do some searches on google first to see if anyone else is having a problem with that specific model.. ...

it sounds like a driver issue though... in which case you'd have to either search for a beta driver for Windows 7 for your external drive or try the newest Windows Vista driver for your drive and see if that works. If there are no Windows 7 drivers available for your drive yet and the newest Vista one doesn't work then you'll just have to wait until there is one released.. You have to remember Windows 7 is in BETA stages and as such there are going to be issues like this.. and unfortunately some aren't going to be able to be fixed until Windows 7 is further along in development..

Hit start > Right click my computer > hit manage > Choose storage > Disk Management > Enable that drive if it shows up.
Windows may have hid the drive when the PC was being set up if the drive was connected at the time, especially if there are OS files backed up on there.

Originally Posted by Kyle

Hit start > Right click my computer > hit manage > Choose storage > Disk Management > Enable that drive if it shows up.
Windows may have hid the drive when the PC was being set up if the drive was connected at the time, especially if there are OS files backed up on there.

I had to assign a drive letter to one of my internal drives! It was fully installed and recognized in storage manager.

Originally Posted by sp00nix

I had to assign a drive letter to one of my internal drives! It was fully installed and recognized in storage manager.

If it was a Windows drive that makes sense, as MS doesn't want you to be able to harm an existing operating system through another.

Originally Posted by Kyle

If it was a Windows drive that makes sense, as MS doesn't want you to be able to harm an existing operating system through another.

Nah, it was the drive with all of my music and other media on it.

well i got it to work on usb. but still could not get it to work through eSATA. so maybe 7 doesnt support eSATA

Originally Posted by imper

well i got it to work on usb. but still could not get it to work through eSATA. so maybe 7 doesnt support eSATA

That's a possibility.. perhaps that will come in future builds...

hay. I have been able to get a Thermaltake dual external bay to work with one internal sata hard drive with a eSATA connection. But I cant get the darn OS to recognize 2 drives in the dual bay at the same time. So eSata will work with a eSata connection.

Knightrider56, you may want to start a new thread. This one is over a year old.