Cannot Connect To My External HDD

[AndrewGS]

I got a new laptop (HP dv6700t running Vista Home Premium) that I need to hook my external HDD (500GB WD in generic case) to via USB. Windows Explorer freezes and the external HDD activity light constanly runs as soon as it's plugged in and it unfreezes as soon as it's unplugged.

I deleted "INFCACHE.1" from "C:\\Windows\INF" at the instruction of a blog and it worked for a few minutes, but it froze during the transfer of a few movies and hasn't worked since.

All help is appreciated.

 

[B.S.O.D.]

Hmm I don't really know the answer to your problem other than try using the same drive on an xp machine. If it works on there, then this may be a vista problem.

 

[AndrewGS]

Hmm I don't really know the answer to your problem other than try using the same drive on an xp machine. If it works on there, then this may be a vista problem.

It has never worked on my XP machines via USB. I had read somewhere that XP wouldn't work with USB drives over a certain capacity, something like 120GB. It works great on my XP desktop using eSATA.

 

[thetechexpert]

I have a 200GB hard drive I use on my laptop all of the time and it works great. But then again a 500 GB may be to much for your laptop to handle or it's a hardware problem. Make sure you always check the manufacturers website and that should help a bit. What are the specs on your laptop?

 

[AndrewGS]

What are the specs on your laptop?

HP dv6700t CTO
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB Cache)
3GB DDR2 RAM
250GB Hitachi 5400RPM HDD
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

Thanks for the help, but I think I'm going to just get a 4GB flash drive and transfer files that way. I was looking at the XP-Vista USB data cables and wondering to myself why Microsoft would not make Vista completely backwards compatible with XP. I think that is my problem because my external HDD has been used with an XP machine and now Vista wants to format it.