PC doesn't read External Hard Drive

[arob_ato]

When I plug in my external hdd via usb, my computer doesn't read the drive. For example, I click on 'My Computer' and all that shows up is the Local Disk C and D drive. I tested my flash drive to make sure it wasn't the usb ports and sure enough the 'Removable Disk F' showed up. The Device Manager reads the external hard drive properly. I have Windows XP SP2, the external hard drive is a 2.5 SATA from the PS3. Any solutions would be more than helpful. Thank you.

 

[robina_80]

when i plug in my ext HD to one of my USB2 ports i have to wait about 30 sec to min for my computer to see it

dunno why there is a delay but there is, i say give it some time

 

[andy faith]

what you could try is going to control panel -> administrative tools -> computer management -> disk management and see if it registers in there when you plug it in. it might just not have a partition.

 

[b3rt_d4ni3l]

Could it be that the computer is not seeing it because it is a PS3 hard drive?

 

[Cromewell]

Could it be that the computer is not seeing it because it is a PS3 hard drive?

That would be my guess. It probably uses a filesystem that is not recognized by windows. I think the PS3 can recognize FAT32 formatted drives but I don't know what filesystem the system formats it to on it's own.

 

[arob_ato]

I tried what you said andy faith and this is what came up:

Disk 1
Unknown
55.88 GB
Not Initialized

Above it reads Disk 0, which is my internal HDD, and that reads fine. So is the computer not reading the HDD??

The PS3 HDD is your standard Serial-ATA drive found in any laptop so I know that's not the problem.

Thanks for the replies and hopefully I'll find a solution to this problem.

 

[arob_ato]

I finally got it to read by going to

Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Disk Management

I then had to active the Drive as well as partition the drive and sure enough it came up under My Documents

 

[Cromewell]

When you partitioned/formatted the drive it destroyed any data on it, hopefully you didn't have any saved games or anything on it.

Yes a PS3 hard drive isn't special hardware but what we were saying was it was formatted with a non-windows filesystem.

 

[arob_ato]

There were no game saves on it but now I'm having the problem of formatting the hard drive to FAT32. It only gives me the option of NTSF or something like that. Any solutions for that??

 

[andy faith]

you can use gnome partition manager (aka gparted). Download it from here get the latest iso image, burn it to cd then boot from it. It will give you the option of what file system to use. Why are you using fat32 rather than ntfs anyway?

 

[Cromewell]

Probably because PS3s can't read NTFS.

Yay for stealing links from other people This program http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm was linked in another thread, it runs from windows so you don't need to make a bootable CD to format the drive.

 

[arob_ato]

Yes Cromewell, that's right the PS3 doesn't read NTSF, which is why i need to have it formatted into FAT32. Basically I want my pictures, video, and music off my PC's internal hard drive but have it tranferable between the PC and PS3.

I've heard about Swissknife and that's the route I'm going to go, but if you don't mind, what exactly to I need to do when I download it. Also I was reading that you cannot format FAT32 when the hard drive is bigger than 32GB's. The hard drive I have is 60GB. Can I format 32GB's in FAT32 and 28GB's in NTSF??

 

[andy faith]

you can indeed, make 2 seperate partitions, one of 32GB and one for the rest (not guaranteed to be 28GB) and format them

 

[Cromewell]

You can format FAT32 when the drive is over 32GB, FAT32 supports drives up to 2TB in size. The Windows XP format cannot format FAT32 bigger than 32GB but you can use a program like swissknife to do it.