Windows 7 - Seagate external hard drive not accessible as a drive

I'm having trouble getting Windows 7 x86 RC Build 7100 to recognize my Seagate 3.5" External Hard Drive 500GB (Model ST305004EXA101-RK). It is connected through a USB 2.0 port on my Asus K8V SE Motherboard - running an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2.0 GHz) and 1 GB of RAM.

Currently, this hard drive when connected appears in Device and Printers as as "Device" named Desktop. Right Click -> Properties shows that it is a storage device.

Device Manager recognizes it as a Disk Drive and calls it a Seagate Desktop USB Device - no conflicts.

Under Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management the drive appears as Disk 1 - Basic and Online statuses. If I try and assign it a drive letter, I get the following "The operation failed to complete becasue the Disk Managment Console view is out of date. Please refresh the console view..."

Only one conflict exists in Device Manager - I have one Unknown Device under USB Controllers. When viewing that device, it gives me a Code 43 error.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Ollie

Has it been initalized & formated?

Yes, it was initialized and formatted out of the box. It is just one day old - was used to store data from my old XP installation.

Have you tried different USB ports? Have you tried re-boot & see if it finds new hardware on re-boot? I have used many external HD' s on XP & several on Windows 7 already.

I use an adapter like this, because I am constantly testing extra HD's or moving data from 1 HD to another.

External drive - probably already has its own caddy and such, plus USB interface.

Your interface above would probably require some sort of disassembly and more than likely void any sort of warranty on the device....

Ollie - did you name the drive 'Desktop' when you backed up your XP stuff? I so, tr to take it to another machine (preferably not running 7) and rename the drive (do not format to some other name than 'Desktop' and then bring it back to the machine and see if it accepts it....

No - I did not name the drive when it was first used. That's the name that Windows 7 "gave" it, I guess. It was recognized instantly when connected in XP, and I've verified it works on both another XP machine and a Vista machine.

I'll try to rename using my Vista computer and see what I can find out.

Yes, I have tried multiple reboots and tried all 8 ports on my computer - no change in the status on any of them.

Psst - see that button beside quote? it is a multiple quote button - you tick off which posts you want to quote (and it is in the order you click them too) and then click the Add Reply button at the bottom and all those posts are quoted in one post - making it easier to quote multiple posts.

Ok - just connected to my Vista laptop - disk management recognizes it just fine. I renamed the drive to Seagate - then reconnected to my Windows 7 machine. It still places the drive in "devices" and gives it the name Desktop.