Is it time to suggest a re-format

[JayTech]

i have been working on a pc today and have tried everything i can think of. The owner has a seagate 120gb external usb hard drive and is using it on an xp system. The external drive is not showing up in my computer, although, it is showing in disk management. In disk management it will allow me to delete the partition on the external drive. It says the drive is health and allows me to mark it as active. It will also allow me to sign a letter to the drive but it will not show in my computer. When i try to format the drive i recive the following error message:

"the operation did not complete the operation because the partition or volume is not enabled. to enable the partion or volume restart the computer"

i have restarted and after this the external drive still does not show in my computer and now under disk management it appeares to now have lost the drive letter i assigned to it. I have tried repair install which did not complete, updating drivers and search all over google for the answer. As i belive this is a windows problem and repair install is not going through do you think its time i cut my losses and reformatted as im sure this would fix the issues. Any ideas that may save me from having to do this would be greatly appreatiated.

Thanks in advance guys
JayTech

 

[jj2000]

i know this may sound completly daft but i had a similar problem today and it was a dodgy usb port,changed the cable reboot nothing. plugged into another usb port and bingo there it was tried my usb stick and the port picked that up straight away but this seagate drive no way.
so i blanked off this port with some sticky tape and jobs a good 'un.

jj

 

[JayTech]

thanks for the reply

thanks for the reply i have tried both the motherboard usb ports and the pci card usb ports but have had no luck. i think ill try a new pci usb card tomorrow. I also have another idea of copying the drivers folder from another xp system on to the problematic pc under the system 32 folder. I will post back in here when i manage to fix it for any future reference.
JayTech

 

[geekhelp4u]

you would be surprised how many USB ports will not work with a usb drive... if the power to the usb drive is via the usb port! There is usually 2 fixes for this problem if this is your case!

1) Use a usb cord that has two ends going to the computer... one for power, one for data transfer

or

2) use an external power supply for the external drive.

This problem mostly happens on dells

another possible solution is that only 1 of the USB ports will send enough power to the drive... try ALL of the USB ports to see if any of them are the one (MASTER SO TO SPEAK) port.

any easy way to tell if this is the problem is when a usb thumb/flash drive works in the port with no problems, but a hard drive will not get power!

 

[generalj]

sounds like the drive is getting power because it shows up in drive manager. I would try telling device manager to scan for new hardware and maybe even uninstall the usb controller from there and reboot with the drive disconnected, let windows reinstall the usb controller then reboot again then plug the drive in.

 

[JayTech]

generalj
hi thanks for the reply
i have tried removing the usb drivers in safe mode and reinstalling in normal mode this made no diff. Also the drive shows as installed and working correctly in device manager.
thanks i will let you know how i get on tomorrow.
JayTech

 

[JayTech]

Geekhelp4u
Thanks for the reply
your correct this external drive does have two usb cables for power and data transfer. The pc is not a dell but as you say this could still be effecting it. I dont think there would be any sign of the drive on the system (such as in device manager and disk management) if there was not enough power to the drive. I will have a look at this tomorrow.
thanks again
JayTech

 

[Bryce W]

Try initializing the drive. Goto Computer Management > Disk Management. Find where the USB drives partition shows up to to the left of it it will say Disk #. Right click on here and choose "Initialize".

 

[JayTech]

i have tried everything suggested and even tried new hardware (pci card) the external drive works on other computers so it is not an issue with that. This is deff down to a windows problem the system 32 folder is all messed up and as repair install is not working i am going to back everything up and install windows again. Thanks for everyones help!!!
JayTech

 

[Nathan H]

"the operation did not complete the operation because the partition or volume is not enabled. to enable the partition or volume restart the computer"

OK Stupid Post time, Is the External Drive ODE or SATA?

If its an IDE I came across this issue around the time XP SP2 was release.

Install the drive internally.

Format the drive using a windows 98 Boot disk

Format and FDisk Commands.....

then connect the drive as an external drive and then convert to NTFS.


Gotta be worth a try....