How did you format and partition the external HD?

It should detect it on reboot and install the proper drivers.

I'll summon Yrag.....

 mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I put the drive in my spare rig to format and partition prior to putting it in the external enclosure.

I know that it should, but for some reason it's not and I have run out of ideas... did all the Windows troubleshooting tips without success, so now.....

Yoohoo, yrag....yoohoo.... could use some help here, please...YOOHOO.

Probably all that salt water in the drive........

1.  Making the assumption (at this point) that it's not hardware failure.....

2.  Something I've experienced in the many years I've been doing what I've been doing is; sometimes the "mounted devices" in your registry gets "buggered"

WARNING: EDITING ONE'S REGISTRY IS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!  YOU CAN CAUSE SERIOUS SYSTEM INSTABILITY IF YOU DO THE WRONG THING IN THE REGISTRY!

Now......with that warning out of the way........hehe

under HKLM >> SYSTEM >> MOUNTED DEVICES

You will see a list of every "mounted" drive/partition and their related DOS drive-letters.  This list will include references for every drive (including every removable) drive you have and ever have had connected to your system.  You will notice that every "DosDevice" letter has a corresponding "string" entry somewhere above it in the list.

When I've encountered an issue such as yours on systems through the years, I've simply matched-up all of the drives I have in my system (OS, etc.) with their strings above in the list and then carefully deleted the other entries.  Any new removable drives you connect from that point forward will be once again "auto-detected" and correctly configured.  Reboot your machine after deleting the "orphaned" entries and you should be in business! 

The issue you're describing often happens in corporate environments where people have cause to connect/disconnect from mapped network drives while using removable USB keys etc.

My tip above, has worked without fail in all of those cases.

Of course if it's hardware failure we're looking at here......then my tip won't help.

thanks,

the Monk

AGAIN.......be very very careful when you're in the registry!!!

the_Monk,

 I had this same thing happen to me, and i did what your suggesting above, and it did seem to work, but i do agree, its not something i would just jump at.

good luck.

Not at all Starkers, USB on both OS's are suppose to be 100% plug and play with no limitation to drive size.  XP Home immediately recognized my 1TB ext. USB LaCie off the top with no drivers installed.

Just for giggles, my tiny suggestion is to first see if the old 250 GB is recognized again from the cradle / USB connection.  Because you already know that drive works with that HDD case.  And for this test you won't have to screw the case shut.

If the 250 GB drive is no longer recognized, but it use to be before the transplant, then you possibly have a problem with the HDD case / cradle. 

On the other hand, if the 250 GB drive does plug and play as it should, take the 500 GB back and get another one.  You might have a bad drive.

Also check the fitting of IDE connector pins and make sure to check if the 500 GB is jumped / not jumped correctly for that case as well.  The cradle that I use requires HD drives jumper removed, internal drives by default comes jumped.  Just glance over at the 250 GB and see how it's jumped.

Basically with this eliminated you can go from there. 

Just a little backward engineering.

Best Of Luck Starkers

 To the_Monk:  That's a nice fix that you shared right there bud!

cplair,

Just glad to be able to help!  That particular fix is the very first thing I try whenever I encounter a removable drive that "used to" show up and now doesn't show or grab a drive-letter.  Hasn't failed me yet in the years I've been doing it...hehe

the_Monk....thanks for the registry info, bud, I'll take a look at that shortly as it seems to be the most probable cause at this time.  I have done some registry editing before, so with your instructions I should be able to resolve this issue safely.. given that this is the cause, of course.  I'm reasonably confident that it is, though.

    @ cplair...   To put the 250 gig back in the case would be a bigger job than I'd want to get into... it has been reformatted, partitioned and put into my second rig as the primary HDD with the OS on it.  However, the 500gig was formatted and patitioned in that machine... shows up as USB Mass Storage device as well.  I also took the 500 gig (mounted in the case) back to my PC store to have it tested on their machines... was instantly instantly recognised on 2 of them the moment it was plugged into a USB port. Both partitions received and sent data back so it would seem the drive and case are in working order.

I also checked out the jumper settings and adjusted accordingly... no jumper is required for this case/drive so I removed it prior to installation.

Thanks for that RomanDA... your experience suggests that I should follow the_Monk's advice and check my registry for false entries regarding removable drives.

Ill get back soon with the result... and thanks to all.

Nope, didn't help... removed the corresponding registry entries (hope I did it right) and rebooted, but drive still does not show up in My Computer or Disk Management, only as a 'flagged' entry in Device Manager.

When I click on that I get a 'Could not start Code 10 error'... and when I click on 'Find a Solution' it tells me that Windows can not load the driver software.

Looks like I'm back to square one.   Oh well, it was worth a shot.

Then perhaps your next step(s) would be, go into Device Manager and attempt to update the drivers for all the USB entries found in the 'Universal Serial Bus controllers' section. (right click an entry and select Update Driver - and allow it to search the internet if asked)

If that fails, remove everything in the USB section and reboot so that Windows is forced to reinstall all the USB drivers and devices. (right click the entries and select Uninstall)

It may take a couple reboots to complete the process.

Yes, if the USB device is showing up "flagged" in the device manager it sounds like there is something wrong with the USB cradle itself or the drivers the OS is trying to use to interface with it.

As I said in my first post, the tip/fix I posted assumes there isn't anything wrong with the actual device just the drive-mappings etc.

Going on the information from your latest post, your next step should be as Moosetek13 suggested.

Well nothing else has worked, so this idea might be my next attempt.... yrag and I are in touch via PM to try and resolve it, and he may very well suggest the same/similar, given his first idea failed to fix it.

To be honest, I don't think Windows has a clue what to do with it... the flagged entry in 'mass storage' is now an unknown device, and when I try to update the drivers it says the best ones are installed already.... like huh????  Also, I have only one USB mass storage unit connected (showing as unknown), yet I have another entry for a mas storage unit in Device Manager>Universal Serial Bus Controller, wich I don't think should be there.

I was really hoping to have had this resolved yesterday so I could free up an internal drive by moving all my backed up data to the external HDD.  Oh well *sigh* maybe tomorrow... it's past my bedtime,

Thanks guy, I appreciate your help... and I'm sure that between us and yrag we'll find the answer.

I don't think so, Matey............