Unrecognized USB Hard Drives

Nwalmaer · Joined: Nov 27, 2006 Posts: 3

I just upgraded to the Vista Ultimate RTM (32-bit/x86). I have a lot of hard drives, both internal and external, each one containing specific info crucial to various parts of my life. However, 3 of my drives, totaling 700 GB (about 655 in reality with the bit-factor), plug in via USB. Vista cannot read or even acknowledge the existence of these drives.

I saw this topic posted about a week ago, then it got bumped, and now it's no longer visible at all outside of Google's cached pages.

All three drives are Western Digital, and of course I've checked their site for any official release - but according to them, there are no Vista drivers "yet" as it is still in "beta." Surely there has to be some way to make these function, because there are reports of USB drives working on the 64-bit version of Vista.

This is my second install, and I've had this problem both times, with no luck picking up any hint of drivers anywhere. Vista reports the device sound right away upon plugging/unplugging the devices, but shows them all as "Unknown USB Hub"s.

Help my poor bleeding soul that Microsoft has butchered again so heartlessly.

shrty · Joined: Nov 28, 2006 Posts: 2

i got the exact same problem.

i have two external storage devices. my maxtor 300GB works perfectly fine, but my western digital "my book" 400GB shows up as a unknown device - but reacts when i plug in/out the cable.

usually in XP i had a green light whenever the disk was turned properly on and loaded into windows, but now vista just know its there, but cant recognize it.

shrty · Joined: Nov 28, 2006 Posts: 2

you will never believe what caused my problems!

the power supply extension was not properly connected, so even if i got power on my WD storage device, windows couldn't recognize it.

i replugged all power cables to the device and whoops, i got the green light on my disk, and vista found my hard drive.

i don't think this caused your problems, but i had to share my experience anyway.

ps. sry 4 bad english;¤

Nwalmaer · Joined: Nov 27, 2006 Posts: 3

Yeah, that's not the case here. They're all hooked up:

320GB Mybook Premium
320GB DualDrive USB
60GB Passport

Not a single one of them is recognized. No clue what to do....

ajm · Joined: Feb 17, 2007 Posts: 2

I have exactly the same problem with a philips external HDD - works fine with XP pro - but not recognised in Vista - Visa device manger states cannot start device driver. Other formus suggest searchingon Vista download site and there are fixes you can down load - but the USB fix would not load on my machieve - error message indicates fix is an older driver - I also tried to use Microsoft's built in solution provider - no luck - so now I am uninstalling the driver hoping that after a restart I can get a decent driver installed. Confused