Computer with Vista not recognising Toshiba external hard drive

Alidee

Advice appreciated, please and thanks.
My desktop computer has stopped recognising my Toshiba external hard drive. When I go to save (e.g. Word document), I cannot see the (F) drive in My Computer. The external drive is connected properly, and the blue light is on. This is a recent problem, as up to the last week I had no problems, and I have a lot of data stored on this drive.
Advice appreciated on what the problem might be, and a solution for it, please... don't want to lose any data from computer, and would like to be able to access stuff already stored.

uch

Reboot PC with drive plugged in and see if that helps, this used to happen to me and this was only way to sort it, it was due to drive letter assignment

Alidee

Thank you for that. Had a go at rebooting, but on startup I just got a message that a driver for an unknown device was installed successfully. Does anyone else know where my Toshiba F drive might be hiding??

uch

Try disk managment then and see if it's being picked up there and not assigned a drive letter, Incidently have you used any other drives previous to your Toshiba stopping working ?

Alidee

Long story, but got sorted eventually, thank everyone for advice.

Went on Google (answer to everything) and got solution on this website ....http://tim.mackey.ie/VistaDriverProblemsFormacUSBHardDrive.aspx
But as advised on some posts I downloaded "Driver Whiz" software, but what a bugger to uninstall. However, more Google, got that sorted too. Now my external hard drive has been given a new name, but anyway it's there, and all my stuff is on it, AND IT WORKS!!.
Meanwhile, yesterday when I had given up hope of retrieving anything, I went looking for external hard drives in Argos, (in border region, so can choose North or South) saw this one http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=10001&catalogId=1500002701&langId=-1&searchTerms=EXTERNAL+HARD+DRIVE which is a 500 gb Iomega external drive with free Acronis back up software for £45. Might be a useful item for the student children, after a lesson well learned by Mum.

ricman

if that doesnt work, try using a linux livecd ,eg mint,linux, that sees any usb device or drive
in my experience.it boots from 1 cdr disk.

Overheal

START > Device Manager

go to your USB Devices. Anything with an "!" - right click the device and select Uninstall.

Reboot the computer.

If there are no devices in the USB tree with "!" Or otherwise no unkown devices with "!" go ahead and find a copy of your USB Driver from your manufacturer website and have it handy. Next, you may want to consider Setting up a System Restore Point (START > System Restore > Create Point) And then Uninstalling all of your USB related devices. After the Reboot, Windows should attempt to automatically discover and reinstall these devices. It would be greatly helped if you had an internet connection when the system started up for this.

ricman

see here

Right-click on My Computer.

Click on Manage.

Choose Disk Management from the left column.

Try to find the external drive in the lower window. It should be "Disk 1" or some other number (but not Disk 0).

Then choose Device Manager from the left column.

Choose Disk drives.

If the drive is not seen there, check under Universal Serial Bus Controllers (if the drive is connected via USB). The drive should appear as a USB Mass Storage Device.

If a yellow ! icon is displayed next to it, double-click on the drive.

A Properties window will appear and will probably say "This device is not working properly" and will give either (Code 28) or (Code 10).

If Code 10 appears, the drive has most probably failed. Verify by trying the drive with
If Code 28 appears, you will need to test the drive on another computer. If the drive works fine on another computer, there are a few steps to follow:

Open a Windows Explorer window (right-click on Start > Explore).

In the address bar, type c:\windows\inf and press Enter.

Right-click on the file INFCACHE.1.

Select Properties.

Click on the "Security" tab.

Click "Edit" to edit permissions.

Click "Add" to add Group or User name.

Delete the file.

Reboot and the file should be rebuilt, correcting the problem.

Alidee

Thank you all very much, I'm sorted now. It was so good of you all to take time out to share your ideas, it's much appreciated.

Overheal

Alidee wrote: »

Thank you all very much, I'm sorted now. It was so good of you all to take time out to share your ideas, it's much appreciated.

we need to know what worked! What if people google this thread 100 years from now and need the same fix? They need the solution! :P

Alidee

This is the one I tried initially, and it worked. Went on Google (answer to everything) and got solution on this website ....http://tim.mackey.ie/VistaDriverProb...HardDrive.aspx
But as advised on some posts I downloaded "Driver Whiz" software, but what a bugger to uninstall. However, more Google, got that sorted too.

But I discovered then that Ricman's and Overheal's advice works too, so lots of ways to achieve the same result, thanks everyone