Windows 7 failing to pick up External Hard Drive

Simple problem really, but no idea where to start with fixing it.

On my old Vista laptop I used an External Hard Drive, with 80GB advertised memory. It is a sumvision enclosure. It uses a Mini-USB to 2 USB connection wire, with one called "Assistant Power" This cable is the one it came with. On Vista, this picked up and worked perfectly.

Now, Windows 7 and my Christmas present PC, and it's not picking up. It's all plugged in, it's been plugged into two back ports, two front ports, two extension ports plugged into a front port and two extension ports plugged into a back port.

The first time I plugged it in a bubble came up at the bottom taskbar saying it had installed device driver software and was good to go. It never picked up.

I have re-started, and re-started with and without it plugged in. No luck either way.

Can anybody help me please, because we need to get these files off that laptop as soon as we can, but I'm not going to do that until they're on this PC, for obvious reasons.

Thanks,
Callum.

Control Panel>Admin Tools>Computer Management>Disc Management>Right click External HD>Change Drive letters and Paths>assign a letter.

This should work if your device manager can pick up your HD.

Dan

Thankyou very much for your quick reply, but unfortunately it's not showing up in Disk Management.

mcintyre94 said:

Thankyou very much for your quick reply, but unfortunately it's not showing up in Disk Management.

Hmm,what about device manager?

Can you download partition wizard home edition and see if it can see it?
Free Download Partition Wizard

Thanks again, but Partition Wizard doesn't detect it at all. Device Manager is somewhat confusing, but I've not seen it in there.

mcintyre94 said:

Thanks again, but Partition Wizard doesn't detect it at all. Device Manager is somewhat confusing, but I've not seen it in there.

Hmmm,do other devices work via your USB ports?

They do. Currently, one back port is connected to a 7 USB Port hub. This has been used time and time again in the past, and I have just checked that a USB pen works in each drive. All successful. I have just tested both front ports with the same pen, perfectly. The receiver for my wireless mouse and keyboard is also plugged into the 7 Port hub, and works flawlessly.

Thanks again. :)

Adrian said:

mcintyre94 said:

Thanks again, but Partition Wizard doesn't detect it at all. Device Manager is somewhat confusing, but I've not seen it in there.

Welcome MC to Windows 7 Support Forums,
Since this is an external HD there is a possibility that a driver needs updating or you need to enable USB within the bios, as my esteemed colleague has suggested is to use disk manager to see if the drive has been allocated or assigned a drive letter. I'm attaching a screenshot from device manager to see how the hard drive may appear.

Regards,
Adrian

Thankyou very much for your help. I have gone through all the high-lighted parts of Device Manager, and right click-update drivers. No luck, and everything was updated.