External hard drive problem

[Mike]

Bought a 400gb Seagate USB external hard drive a week ago (£80 from Maplins). Set it up on my pc and shared it on the wireless network.

All was fine for a few days then one night pc froze, wouldn't restart properly. Tried safe mode and everything but no joy. Eventually just powered down the Seagate and pc springs back to life.

Since then if I plug Seagate into pc the drive isn't recognised/doesn't show up anywhere.

So plugged the Seagate into my notebook and it works perfectly.

Any ideas why it won't work with my pc?

tvm :)

[Christopher]

I've had this happen to me with other external usb devices - scanners and what-not - more often than not it is a power thing (device wants more power than systemcan supply). Does it have its own power supply? and is it plugged in via a hub? or directly into the PC?

The device would prefer being plugged into the PC directly and with external power - even then there is no guarantee it wilk work either ...

Cheers

[Mike]

Thanks Christopher. The Seagate has it's own power supply and is plugged in direct. But the pc in question is a little old now (when I bought it it's 18GB hard drive was class leading lol).

Perhaps retirement beckons..................

[mantianak]

Have you tried plugging it into different ports?
Each time you plug it into a new usb port it reinstalls the driver for it. Try the usb ports at the rear or the computer, the ones on the motherboard itself.

When ever my computer crashes randomly it can at time bu*ger up the wireless. The only way I can fix this is by doing an error check.
Goto my computer, right click on the hard drive containing windows, click on properties, then click on tools and then error checking- check now.
Make sure. Make sure both boxes are tick and start the check. You will have to reboot and it can take a while to check.

[mantianak]

Just had another thought.
When it works in your laptop, does it make a lot of loud clicking and takes a while loading from it? That is usually a sign of a dying hard drive.