I took my external hard drive to my daughter's house to 'lift' a video and some music of her note book PC which has Windows 7.
I assumed that I would be able to just plug into the USB port - but the note book would identify the external drive - but wouldn't open it or even acknowledge anything was on it.
Any ideas what was the issue - would I need to install the drivers onto the notebook?
What file system is on the external HD? Windows will only recognise DOS rooted filing systems and NTFS.
Does it need an external power supply? If normally powered from USB, the notepad may not have enough poke for it to spin up and be recognised.
Sometimes you can get a dual USB cable that takes the power from two ports.
With W7 you just plug the usb in and after "installing device", it works.
Is your drive one of those ones that takes its power from the usb port?
A notebook may not have enough power spare to at the port to spin an external drive.
Its easy to take a linux live CD with you in case its a software issue. That'll run the pc in linux for file transfer without making any changes to windows.
NT
You need to set permissions for the drive, have a quick Google on 'take possession' of a drive/folder etc.
IOW's the file protection system is working and you need to take ownership of the drive contents.
It is NTFS and has a proper power supply.
Looks feasible. Thanks
And you do that by looking it right in the eye and not letting it near the fridge
NT :)
LOL :)
In message , Nitro® writes
I't migth be the issue, but I've never had to do that with an external drive and I regularly swop mine between computers
Also consider whether USB cable might be damaged or trying another USB port on the notepad.
I've got a similar external USB drive - on one machine, the position of the port means that the cable is mostly straight going in and it is recognised straight away; on the other machine, because I rest the drive on top of the case, the cable about 5cm from the end has to be straightened by hand before the PC will recognise it.
Yup, I am doubtful also. If you could see folders etc but not open them, then yes possibly, but if you just get a blank directory its unlikely to be permission related.
out of curiosity what do you get with a DIR on it from a command prompt?
It may just need a drive letter assigning in disk manager...
Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management Then do you see the drive listed here without a drive letter? If so, you can assign it a drive letter here, and bob is your father's brother.
Toby...
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