usb external hard drive not seen/found

running an Inspiron with Win7...

i had "gone through" a couple of smaller 512 or 1,024 gb usb hard drives and so i moved up to a 1 tb portable hard drive...

my daughter used them for a while and since im going to be moving some files around, she gave them back to me.  she said on her computer they only show the file system and basic stuff...

heres the problem.  shes running Win10 and im sure they got reformatted to Win10...

is there anything i can do to search for them and reformat them for Win7?

Doesn't make a difference. USB flash drives are sometimes formatted FAT32 but a 1TB external should be formatted NTFS.

Attach the 1TB external on the Windows 7 computer. Open Disk Management. Right click Computer > Manage > Disk Management. The 1TB should be shown as healthy and NTFS. There should only be one partition on the disk.

FAT32 has a 2GB file size limitation. NTFS does not have this limitation. It is also a more robust file system and should be used on an external hard drive. 

Edit: From the title of your post are you saying the external is detected in Windows 10 but not Windows 7?

Edited by JohnC_21, 03 September 2017 - 09:35 PM.

yep...

i see now that both of them are onlya 100mb portable hard drives but neither have a name... 

there are a lot of options under "help", the only thing that i can get to open when i try clicking on it but i havent a clue what to choose to give them names...

yep...

 

i see now that both of them are onlya 100mb portable hard drives but neither have a name... 

 

there are a lot of options under "help", the only thing that i can get to open when i try clicking on it but i havent a clue what to choose to give them names...

I am not sure what you mean by options under help. Are you talking about Help in Disk Management? What do you mean by giving them names? Do you mean naming the portable hard drives. 100MB seems too small for a portable hard drive. That's even too small for a regular current flash drive.

I will be off until tomorrow morning so I can answer any questions then or somebody else on the forum may answer them.

i was wrong on the 100mb size.  looking at the partition under disk management, it shows a 100mb partition with no name (no C: or E: or whatever) and THAT was what i thought was the portable drive...

in looking closely, one is a 500gb (toshiba) the other is probably the same size but a Western Digital...

neither of them show when looking at the disk managment windows...

The 100MB partition is the System Reserved partition of your Windows drive.

I am not sure why the two external drivers do not show on your Windows 7 computer. They may show as a disk 1 with it being not initialized. Do you see anything like that with the drive attached? Do you hear the sound when attaching the USB drive?

There is software that will remove all Plug and Play USB devices that are not attached. Sometime drivers from one device can conflict with another and not be detected. 

You can also attach one of the external drives then open a command prompt. Type

diskpart      Opens the diskpart command window

list disk       If Windows sees the disk it would be labeled disk 1 if you only have one internal drive.

no dice...

it only shows Disk 0, my one internal hard drive

Is the disk detected on your other computer?

hi to all,

i very hope your problem not to be any severe as the problem i had two years ago

suddenly my windows xp could't seen my usb external drive (verbatim 500 gb) and this due to the damaged usb port of the drive !

this is very common within usb external disks 

after a year or two the drive's usb port is not ''fully working'' so windows cannot see the drive, also another common problem is the follow : windows can see the drive but it ask for format !

this can happen suddenly and have to do with the safely remove hardware ! since many of us disconnect the drive without ''first'' safely remove hardware

safely remove hardware is needed ''always' otherwise corrupted data will occur ! and your usb external drive will need format

Is the disk detected on your other computer?

i plugged it into another Win7 computer and it doesnt show there either...

my daughter said it shows on her Win10 machine though.  she had used it so i wonder if it got reformatted to that OS...

the lights light up and for a very brief moment, i can feel it start to spin but it doesnt spin for long...

i always use the safe to eject/unplug/remove drive...

Is the drive detected when attached to the other USB ports? Does the Windows 7 computer detect any USB flash drive? If is does do the following.

Download DeviceCleanupCMD. Unzip the file to a folder on your desktop. In that folder is a folder called X64, Copy the X64 folder to the root of C:\.

Detach the USB external if attached and any USB flash drives.

Open an elevated command prompt. Type CMD in the Search Box > Right click > Run as Administrator.

Type the following commands

cd c:\x64
devicecleanupcmd *

You will see all non-present USB plug and play devices being deleted. The next time to attach a USB device the driver will be installed again. Sometimes previous plug and play drives for USB devices conflict with each other.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/devicecleanupcmd.zip

Edit: If the above does not work is there any data on the external you need. If so please back it up first on the Windows 10 computer and after the backup post back. I think this problem relates to a hibernation file Windows 10 may be placing on the hard drive.

Edited by JohnC_21, 04 September 2017 - 09:46 AM.

cmd c:\64 works

devicecleanupcmd and devicecleanupcmd * are both 'is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file'

theres nothing on the drives that need backing up. 

Just to confirm. x64 is on the root of C:\. 

After the command cd:\x64 the prompt changes to c:\x64?

Then at the c:\x64 prompt type 

dir <enter>

you should see a file called devicecleanupcmd.exe file.

yes...

i type cd:\x64 <enter> and i get

c:\x64  i typed

dir <enter> and i got this

Volume in drive C is OS

Volume Serial Number is 7C4E-86D4

Directory of c:\64

09/04/2017 10:58 AM <DIR>

09/04/2017 10:58 AM <DIR>

09/04/2017 10:58 AM             39,320 DeviceCleanup.exe

1 File(s) 39,320 bytes

2 Dir(s) 37,397,987,328 bytes free

c:\x64

I just downloaded the zip file I linked to and unzipped the file to a folder. The X64 folder has a file named DeviceCleanupCmd.exe not devicecleanup.exe. Can you download the zip file again. Unzip to a folder on your desktop and browse the X64 folder. What is the exe file in the folder on the desktop?

It looks like somehow you downloaded the Windows version of the tool and not the Command Line version.

Edited by JohnC_21, 04 September 2017 - 11:37 AM.