WinXP not recognizing my external HD

dccyclone25

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Ok, I bought a Seagate 300GB SATA hard drive and an external enclosure to use as supplemental storage for my laptop. The enclosure has a USB 2.0 connection, which runs into my USB 2.0 PCMCIA card on my laptop. I also have an external DVD burner running into the same card, and it works fine.

My problem is that when I have the external HDD plugged into the PCMCIA card, WinXP won't recognize it. It doesn't show up in Disk Management, but it DOES show up as "disk drive" in Device Manager. When I plug it into the USB 1.1 slots on the back of the laptop, the external HDD shows up perfectly fine (except being slow as hell).

Anybody have any clue as to the problem, or to what I can do? I'm feeling like my last resort is buying a new PCMCIA card and hoping that it was the problem.
 
I wish I could help as this is so annoying when it happens :(

Have you tried changing over the USB cables on the device to see if another USB 2.0 slot will make it work?

Thats the only thing I can think of.
 
I would go in Comuter Management. It seems that the drive is inhstalled, but you'll need to format it first. USB 2.0 is more with formating than 1.1

And make sure you use the same exact port for it.
 
I've tried the hard drive in both of the USB 2.0 ports, and I've already formatted the drive as well. I just had it hooked up to the USB 1.1 port last night to transfer stuff, but it took FOREVER.

I guess I'll just keep trying some different configurations to see if it magically works. :(
 
Alright, so I tried hooking up the HD to my roommate's Dell laptop (more recent version of mine) with integrated USB 2.0, and it worked just fine.

So it's looking like the problem is my USB 2.0 PCMCIA card. The only thing that concerns me is why the DVD burner works but not the HD. I guess I can just go to Best Buy and try a different card and if it doesn't work, return it (hopefully).
 
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