Cant see hard drive on computer

[Roly_43]

I bought a seagate portale hard drive plugged it into my laptop, gave it a name, but cant see it on my computer noy even in device manager. But if i take portable hard drive and plug into another computer i can see it, what could I have pesed when I was plug hard drive to laptop ?

 

[Paperdoc]

Do you need to install a device driver for this unit in your laptop's OS? Maybe the other computer already had a drive installed, or found it on its own hard drive.

 

[Roly_43]

Was told dont need driver if computer have xp

 

[Jonmor68]

The laptop may not be able to supply sufficient power via the usb cable to the drive. Some usb drives have 2 usb connections to get extra power from laptops.
If you have any other usb devices plugged in to the laptop, disconnect those and try again, as well as trying different ports.

 

[foxy_roxy]

For what it's worth......

1. If the external hard drive came with its own power supply try powering it with that and then connect the hard drive to your laptop with the standard issue usb cable.

2. You can connect a "powered" usb hub to the laptop and connect the external hard drive to this hub.