Expert: Chris Morrison Date: 5/20/2008 Subject: External hard drive doesnt work
Question I am using windows vista, and I have a simpletech 500gb external HD. It was working just fine a month or two back. However, when I tried to use it today, the system gave a message saying a software driver for the device needs to be installed. The system by itself cannot find any drivers, and there are none on the simpletech website for vista. I tried to use the one for win 98, but it didnt work. I also tried rebooting and removing the drivers for usb controllers and re-installing them, but it didnt help either. The device must be pre formatted, as I dont remember having to make any selection for NTFS or FAT32, and I dont remember installing any drivers either. Kindly suggest a solution if there's any.
Answer make sure you have all the windows updates installed.
Then right click computer and choose manage.
Go down to device manager - make sure the drive is plugged in - and see if there are any exclamation points. If there are see what windows is saying the drive is.
You can also try right clicking the device and say update or install driver. Choose to look online. Microsoft may have a driver.
Lastly scroll down to disk management (in the same window) and check and see if the drive is in the lower half. If it is grayed out you may need to rebuild the drive and bios. Simpletech should have a free utility to do this but it will erase your data.
