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Windows Forum / Windows Me / Hardware / April 2004USB drive problems
I am trying to use a USB external hard drive and my computer won't assign a drive letter to it.. It is shown as a Mass Storage Device in device manager and the Unplug or Eject icon is in my system tray but I can't access the drive Explorer won't assign a drive letter to your drive until it has been fdisked. Have you done that? If not then that is the cause of your problem and what follows may help. Since you are using an external USB drive the way to fdisk and then format it is to open a DOS window in Win Me and then run fdisk from the DOS prompt. Enable large disk support, switch fdisk to access the usb drive and then make your partitions. Normally one would do this from DOS by booting from a floppy but since it is a usb drive you won't be able to see the drive from DOS and therefore you need to do this from a DOS window running in Win Me. For details of how to fdisk and format see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 255867 - "How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=255867).  SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP mcmaltby@hotmail.com > I am trying to use a USB external hard drive and my > computer won't assign a drive letter to it.. It is shown as > a Mass Storage Device in device manager and the Unplug or > Eject icon is in my system tray but I can't access the drive A friend is letting me use it to get some info that is on the drive already. Do I still need to fdisk the usb drive? Will I lose any info on the drive now? >-----Original Message----- >Explorer won't assign a drive letter to your drive until it has been fdisked. [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > >. Careful. Do NOT fdisk or format the drive if it contains data. If the drive was from a PC running XP or Win2K it is quite possible that it has been formatted to use the NTFS filing system which Win Me can't read. You could however still use FDISK to see how the drive is partitioned and whether using FAT16/FAT32. Win Me's FDISK won't recognise an NTFS partition other than being present but filing system unknown. SignatureMike Maltby MS-MVP mcmaltby@hotmail.com anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote: > A friend is letting me use it to get some info that is on > the drive already. Do I still need to fdisk the usb drive? > Will I lose any info on the drive now? I have a similar problem on my Father's computer. Unfortunately he deleted some stuff on his computer that caused various problems, but he has since had a local computer shop fix things up so that everything runs okay now. EXCEPT, he has a Fuji 2600Z camera that no longer seems to connect properly. When he connects, it shows as a mass storage device in the system tray and in the device manager, BUT no drive letter is assigned and it doesn't show up in explorer or his camera software. Any suggestions. USB drivers from Fuji have been reinstalled/updated and software viewer has been updated also. Thanks in advance. >-----Original Message----- >Explorer won't assign a drive letter to your drive until it has been fdisked. [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > >. I had the same problem. Windows will not allow you to assign a drive letter (I don't know why) to a mass storage device. I just plugged in an 80GB drive to a USB port. It worked OK, but depending on what else I had plugged it, its' location kept changing. Then I found that it is listed in Device manager (Start >ControlPanel >System> Device Manager - View devices by type) in two different ways. One is as a storage device, (near the bottom), and the other is under "Disk Drives". Click the little plus sign and you should see your device listed. Right click on it, choose Properties, and select the 'Settings' tab. Check the box to define it as a 'removable device'. Then you can set a drive letter below. I did this a while ago, and it has not caused me any problems. ---911 >-----Original Message----- >Explorer won't assign a drive letter to your drive until it has been fdisked. [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > >. |
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