Newbie Western Dig HDD issue, Wont recognize

Hi guys
Hopeing you can help out a total Newbie here

I have two WD 500 gig externals. Both names 500 backup1 and 500 backup2

For some reason with them both plugges into my machine explorer will only recognize one at a time. The odd part is that if you go to eject them on the taskbar you can pick which to eject. They are both named differently so why can we eject them one at a time but explorer will not show me both to transfer files from one to another? Thanks for any help!

automagp68 said:

Hi guys
Hopeing you can help out a total Newbie here

I have two WD 500 gig externals. Both names 500 backup1 and 500 backup2

For some reason with them both plugges into my machine explorer will only recognize one at a time. The odd part is that if you go to eject them on the taskbar you can pick which to eject. They are both named differently so why can we eject them one at a time but explorer will not show me both to transfer files from one to another? Thanks for any help!

Its probably that they are either both set to primary or slave check the diagram on the drives and see if they have a cable select position and use that for both. Im assuming they are ide drives

BTW welcome to sevenforums

Ken

perhaps one of them hasn't been formated yet?

check in disk management.

Win+R -> diskmgmt.msc

zigzag3143 said:

Its probably that they are either both set to primary or slave check the diagram on the drives and see if they have a cable select position and use that for both. Im assuming they are ide drives

BTW welcome to sevenforums

Ken

Ken

Thanks for your reply. Could you go in depth a little more on how to do this? What do you mean by diagram. Sorry for the dumb questions. The drives already both haves. But thanks for the idea sup3rsprt.

Bobby

I'm assuming they are USB right?

If you connect one at a time, do they work?

Try to plug one into the back of your computer and one in the front.

zigzag3143 said:

Its probably that they are either both set to primary or slave check the diagram on the drives and see if they have a cable select position and use that for both. Im assuming they are ide drives

BTW welcome to sevenforums

Ken

Ken

So i was just doing some homework here and i was trying to make sure these are IDE drives. So first me being a novice thought i might go figure out what IDE means. Which im still slightly confused about. These drives are both external usb 2.0 ESata drives with there own power supply. I did read somewhere that IDE drives will not funtion correctly while useing a cable that is longer then 18 inches. Is that correct. One of the USB cables i was useing is certianly longer then 18 inches. However i switched to a shorter one with no succcess. Maybe im going down the wrong path of troubleshooting here but thought i would add this bit of research in. Thanks for any additional help.



EDIT!

Ok i figured out waht IDE means. LOL no these are USB connectors. Sorry im a newbie.

sup3rsprt said:

I'm assuming they are USB right?

If you connect one at a time, do they work?

Try to plug one into the back of your computer and one in the front.

sup3rsprt

Thanks for the idea. My machine is just my Laptop so they only have 3 usbs on the side. I did try them one at a time and also swapped out different USB cables. Whatever one is recongized or plugged in first is visable and usable. The second one will show to eject it in the task bar but not in explorer. If you plug them in one after the other in reverse you get the same thing but backwords. So both drives are completly functional. Also went back to my xp machine and works no problem. Very odd.

automagp68 said:

Ken

Thanks for your reply. Could you go in depth a little more on how to do this? What do you mean by diagram. Sorry for the dumb questions. The drives already both haves. But thanks for the idea sup3rsprt.

Bobby

Bobby we could give you more if we knew what kind of drives they are. Are they USB, IDE, internal external, etc.

Let me know

Ken

zigzag3143 said:

Bobby we could give you more if we knew what kind of drives they are. Are they USB, IDE, internal external, etc.

Let me know

Ken

Sorry Ken

I edited one of the posts above after figureing out what IDE ment. They are not IDE. They are External USB Wester Digital 500 gig.

( the little black boxes from Best Buy :)

go to Start Orb thingy then in the search area type in: diskmgmt.msc and hit enter.
It will load the Disk Management console.
Look though the listing below (the area that will have stuff like Disk 0, Basic, 298.09GB, Online)... and look to see if both are listed there. If one says Offline or Inactive, try to right click on it and choose Activate, Reactivate disk, Connect, anything along those lines (sorry I forget the exact wording since I am not on that system right now, am at work).