No access to usb drive

Dazstoke · 10 Aug 2015 at 14:39

I bought a Toshiba external usb drive a few months ago.
I created a Win 7 recovery disc (which I seem to have lost) and an image of my local drive on the Toshiba.
When I connect the drive now it doesn't show up in My Computer or Disk Manager but is visible in Device Manager.I uninstalled it and then re-installed it but that hasn't fixed the problem.
Any suggestions ?

ED209 · 10 Aug 2015 at 15:21

are you connecting the drive to a USB3 port?

on my mobo I had to install my USB 3 drivers for my mobo before I was able to access it. try a different port\usb 2 port.

does the HDD show at all in device manager? do you have another PC you can connect it too for testing?

Dazstoke · 10 Aug 2015 at 16:28

It is a usb3 drive but my motherboard is usb2.
I've tried a couple of ports.
Yes it shows up in device manager.

I have a Linux pc I could try

Dazstoke · 10 Aug 2015 at 17:00

Well it's showing up on my linux pc so the drive must be ok

ED209 · 10 Aug 2015 at 21:05

ok, does it appear at all in disk manager after testing it on the other PC?

Dazstoke · 10 Aug 2015 at 21:12

It appears in the Linux disk manager,I can see the image file but it doesn't appear in Windows disk manager.
Could it be something to do with the format ? I can see it's NTFS on the Linux pc

Dazstoke · 11 Aug 2015 at 18:44

I've just tried another usb drive that I know was working and that doesn't show either but my android tablet and a pendrive does.
Any thoughts people ?

delpy8 · 11 Aug 2015 at 19:49

Have you tried an external USB Hard drive?

Dazstoke · 13 Aug 2015 at 19:17

I've fixed it.
It turns out my m/b does have usb3 ports after all and I had my keyboard and mouse plugged into them which is a big no no according to the manual.
Swapped them around so only the usb drive is in a 3 port and now it shows up properly.
That's a relief.