• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

External hard drive help.

Captain Shaw

Captain Shaw

Vice Admiral
Premium Member
Yesterday got a Fujitsu StorageBird 500GB External Hard Drive Hi Speed USB drive. STORAGEBIRD 35EV840

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176802

Worked fine at first but now not one pc in the house will recognise it.
So I went on google but the only advice on there was to
Click on Manage.Click on Disk Management.Right Click on your STORAGEBIRD On NEW PARTITION follow instructions
Click to expand...
But this does not work because the lap top does not know the thing is there.
So I was wondering if anyone on here has any advice or have I been ripped off by Fujitsu because I don't think ebuyer will give me a refund for this problem.
 
That's weird, and a bit ominous. How many PCs have you tried it on? Does it show any signs of life? Have you checked the website to see if your OS requires a driver download?
 
RJDiogenes said:
That's weird, and a bit ominous. How many PCs have you tried it on? Does it show any signs of life? Have you checked the website to see if your OS requires a driver download?
Click to expand...
One pc and one laptop it is alive but the computers just recognise it has a usb mass storage device so can not access anything that is on there.
After going on google it looks like this is a old problem with no answers so it looks like after 3 weeks of saving for this piece of junk I might have well just thrown my money on the fire.:rolleyes:
Looks like I will just have to save up again and go out and buy another one hopefuly this time it will be a decent model.
 
That's a shame. Maybe you should try to get your money back. Or maybe you could try reformatting it. Are there any downloadable drivers on the home page?
 
RJDiogenes said:
That's a shame. Maybe you should try to get your money back. Or maybe you could try reformatting it. Are there any downloadable drivers on the home page?
Click to expand...
There no drivers to download that I can find.
I am going to try to get my money back but don't hold out much hope of them refunding me as it is a software issue and the thing has got quite a few of my files on it.
 
I have a USB stick that refused to mount on my OSX laptop. The little light just kept on flashing and the drive was never available. But on my PC it mounts the drive in a couple of seconds. It was strange.

Then I discovered after deleting all the files on the drive, it then mounted on my OSX laptop. Some time later it went back to it's old ways and after I deleted everything on it a second time, it was fixed again.

Is currently working :D

I don't know if you need your drive to have a named identity. My ipod is seen as "mass storage device" also when I plug it in, but it is still available as a drive letter. I can save and read files to/from it. Do you not get a new drive letter appearing in My Computer with your external hard disk?
 
Jadzia said:
I have a USB stick that refused to mount on my OSX laptop. The little light just kept on flashing and the drive was never available. But on my PC it mounts the drive in a couple of seconds. It was strange.

Then I discovered after deleting all the files on the drive, it then mounted on my OSX laptop. Some time later it went back to it's old ways and after I deleted everything on it a second time, it was fixed again.

Is currently working :D

I don't know if you need your drive to have a named identity. My ipod is seen as "mass storage device" also when I plug it in, but it is still available as a drive letter. I can save and read files to/from it. Do you not get a new drive letter appearing in My Computer with your external hard disk?
Click to expand...
When It was working it was hard drive D but now I get nothing.:(
 
Sometimes, storage devices will install a driver automatically when they are first connected. If this has happened, it may be that this driver is not working properly with your computer.

See if you can find this external hard disk in "Add/Remove Hardware" in the Control Panel.

If you can find it, (and with the external hard drive disconnected), you may consider uninstalling the driver, and see what happens when you then plug it in.
 
From a little googeling of mine I can tell that you are not alone with this problem -and it would seem that none of the others have found any solution to this problem either :(

Do you have the possibility to try and connect via eSATA instead of USB?
 
Jadzia said:
Sometimes, storage devices will install a driver automatically when they are first connected. If this has happened, it may be that this driver is not working properly with your computer.

See if you can find this external hard disk in "Add/Remove Hardware" in the Control Panel.

If you can find it, (and with the external hard drive disconnected), you may consider uninstalling the driver, and see what happens when you then plug it in.
Click to expand...
One of the first things I tried:(
Makes me so mad that this is a know problem yet fujitsu siemens still keep on selling the thing and have not come up with a way to fix the problem.
 
I expect the problem is the usb enclosure's firmware, and not the hard disk itself. So if all else fails, it should be possible to salvage the hard disk from inside. That's the most expensive bit.

You should be able to fit that as a new internal drive into your desktop computer.

Or if you ever purchase a new/empty usb enclosure (~£15?), the disk could be transferred to it, to keep it external.
 
Have you checked the external harddisks power supply? External 3.5" disks need an external power source to operate, 2.5" disks do not, they operate on the USB power. If its dead your computer might see the USB<->SATA interface, but not the disk.

Good luck! :techman:

PS.
Word of advice: always safely remove USB mass storage devices! Better safe then sorry I always say.
 
Try seeing if you can change the drive letter.

Sometimes the drive gets the idea that it's named the same thing as the DVD drive or something, so of course the computer won't see it because it already had a DVD drive.

You said it was calling itself 'D' but maybe it got confused and is something else now. Try to change it to drive S or T or something like that.

If it's really broken this won't help, but it's worth checking.
 
Small White Car said:
Try seeing if you can change the drive letter.

Sometimes the drive gets the idea that it's named the same thing as the DVD drive or something, so of course the computer won't see it because it already had a DVD drive.

You said it was calling itself 'D' but maybe it got confused and is something else now. Try to change it to drive S or T or something like that.

If it's really broken this won't help, but it's worth checking.
Click to expand...
Thanks but this will not work because the disk will not initialized.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top