So, I bought an external hard drive and I am having a hell of a time getting it going. When I plug the hard drive in, via USB, the computer detects the new hardware. It also gives you the option to unplug/eject the hard drive on the task bar, so I am pretty sure it recognizes it.

In the device manager, you can "USB Disk" listed under Storage Device. The USB controllers in the Device Manager lists the USB port it is using as "USB Mass Storage Device." The icon next to it has a little green circle with a question mark.

The only software that came with the HD is for Windows 98, because Win ME is supposed to need it. I'm assuming there is something up with that little green question mark.

The HD should show up in My Computer, correct? I don't know which of this information is useful, but I would greatly appreciate any help.

MS Article ID:275012 - Description of Green Question Mark in Device Manager

Are you sure it really needs a 98 driver installed ?

Have you checked the manufacturers web site for troubleshooting & FAQ's ?

Make ?

Model ?

Exact problem ?

My experience of external hard drives in ME is you need to ensure it is formatted as FAT32 before ME will see it as an external hard disk rather than just something attached to a USB port. If you have access to a Windows XP PC plug it in so it detects it, then (assuming you are logged in with full admin rights) right mouse click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management where your USB Disk will show up as either formatted or unallocated. Formatting as FAT32 can then be easily completed. When you plug the USB drive back into ME it should see it correctly.

As far as the brand and whatnot, it is this one: http://www.ohisit.com/ProductInfo.a...

I've been trying to contact the seller, but it is taking time. The problem is that the hard drive isn't showing up in my computer, so I can't use it. The computer is recognizing that it is there in some form, but I can't actually save anything to it. Oh, and my mistake. I meant to say Win ME isN'T supposed to need a driver.

I'll trying that formatting suggestion.

The computer I used that has Win XP couldn't format the drive to Fat32. The option wasn't available.

Sorry - I assume your drive is over 32Gb? I forgot there is a glitch in XP in that it won't format FAT32 over a partition size of 32Gb. The trick is to create separate partitions in XP of 32Gb so the whole disk is divided up. ME will then recognise it as a hard disk and you can reformat in ME. Win98/ME don't suffer from the 32Gb glitch. You might just format one 32Gb partition using XP & then plug the drive into ME just to test if it sees that partition and that you've solved your problem before dividing up the rest of the disk.

Me fdisk will partition up to ~137GB.

Oddly, once partitioned with fdisk, NT will happily use it.

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If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Would this hard drive be related to the "PCI Communication Device" section in the Device Manager?

I totally formatted and recovered my computer. I was able to burn everything I wanted onto discs and then copy them onto the hard drive using the Windows XP computer I have access to every once and a while.

I am now getting a message from the "PCI Communication Device" in the Device Manager and it is telling me that "...the drivers for this device are not installed." I was just wondering if they are related, because the hard drive still isn't showing up in My Computer.

ybrmuggslp21,

This sounds a bit similar to the problem I've been fighting today. Tell me, if you left-click on the usb-device icon in the system tray, does it show the device, but no drive letter? If so, try leaving the external drive connected to the machine through a reboot, and see if it gets a drive letter/recognized.

I haven't found a solution yet, but if it's the same kind of problem, I'll let you know if I come up with an answer.

Regards,

When it looks for the driver, it only brings up .INF (I believe, I can't check it right now)files. Is that normal? I thought it was just supposed to find .sys files? Any more suggestions?

EDIT: The PCI problem was just with my old dial-up modem. I removed it.

bump. please help.

Forgot all about this thread. Assuming you've rtfm'd and followed the manual there is no reason it shouldn't work, especially off the back of a fresh install.

It should work out of the box on ME without any prompt for drivers. If it wants drivers, then it should tell you either onscreen with clear dialogue boxes, or in the manual - and the drivers supplied should be good enough to do the job.

If it were me, I would have sent it back as faulty goods under it's 1 year warranty that's advertised on the link you gave. Because it simply doesn't work as advertised.

I would get my money back, get another $30 + together and buy a reputable branded external drive with decent software (Seagate, Western Digital etc) from a well known reputable reseller.

I'm at the point where I know it is a problem with the driver, but I can't get a hold of anyone to tell me which one I need.

Why is that difficult?

Why don't you know what driver to install, you should only have a couple on the disk (that came with the drive). It should be either auto recognised when the disk spins up or you should get some type of auto menu option to select 9x or ME - or a clearly denoted 9x/ME option.

OR, you should be able to manually look on the disk (through explorer) and kick start any driver installation from there, plus you should be able to read the *help file(s) on the disk.

But we know this isn't the case from your first post because you stated the only software supplied is for 98 (9x).

Now what does all this tell you ??

...you need to get your money back.

If you find out the answer please let me know. My computer is doing the same thing. I can read it on 98 and XP machines but on my ME it is giving me all the problems you are talking about under the device manager and wont read anything. The software it came with only has 98 drivers and the install software wont run on an ME machine.

Having the same problem myself, bought the 120GB HD off Ebay as it seemed a bargain, it was to replace a "reputable branded" 40Gig portable from Phillips which crashed one month after purchase (my screwdriver made the warranty void damn it), however the seller has all positive replies from many buyers so appears to be reputable. Coincidentally both these HD's use the same basic unit, the Hitachi Travelstar (http://hitachigst.com). It is true that the supplied software disk only has the Win98 driver as WinMe supplies the driver when it originally detects the new hardware, I guess!! I'm awaiting a reply from their Help people so in the meantime will select "Auto detect HDD" in my BIOS to see if that works - I'll let you know the result.

OK had a degree of (apparent) success, went into BIOS (press Delete as PC starts) and selected Secondary HD>Auto detect....... back into WinMe>Start>Settings>Control Panel>System>Device Manager>Disc Drives>Generic USB, click on this to highlight and select Properties. In the new box which opens select Settings, go to Options and uncheck Disconnect, now I can see Local disk (which I named G) in My Computer. I can now select Format but I get a message saying there's not enough memory to complete the format!!! Now what?

They won't reply to e-mails, and don't bother calling them. I did it three times and every time they said they would e-mail me the proper drivers, but never did.

I've been messing around with what you were talking about, but I have a lot of questions, because I don't know how to set it up.

I chose to make it a Slave Driver. I chose [ATAPI Removeable]. Then, under that, it has all of these setting that I don't know how to set.

Multi-Sector Transfers:
LBA Mode Control:
32 Bit I/O:
Transfer mode:
Ultra DMA Mode:
Smart Monitoring: (It won't let me change this one)

Can anyone tell me what to choose for those settings? Most of them are just enable/disable.

After I did that (probably with the wrong settings) and going into the device manager and deselecting "disconnect" and selecting "removeable," in the "Disc Driver" drop-menu, I can get it to show up in "My Computer" as a removable disk, but whenever I try to open it, it asks if I want to format the drive, which I don't. When I select no, it just doesn't do anything.

Help?

ybrmuggslp21

Have you tried your drive in another computer? I had a problem like yours, but with a Apricorn A25-FW-120 120GB, and it was my PC who was wrong, not the drive. You can check more choices for buying external hard drives in here:

http://www.compuplus.com/s-subcat-S...