1. "Drive not found" troubleshooting for USB:
| • Check Power - | |
| Confirm the drive has power and that the power LED is glowing on the drive and power converter. If the light is not lit, check that the power connector in the drive is connected properly. Then check that all the connections are tight (power cable to wall, power cable to power supply, power supply to drive). If it still does not light up then temporarily remove any surge protectors and plug the drive into the wall outlet. | |
| • Confirm the USB cable is plugged in to the computer and the drive - | |
| The USB port must be connected from the device to the Computer for detection and operation. | |
| • Remove any hubs - | |
| Plug the drive directly into the USB port on the computer. Powered USB hubs should work fine, however if another device on the hub is having a problem the hard drive may be disabled. | |
| • Is the USB host controller properly configured? - | |
| To confirm that your USB host controller is working properly under Windows XP, right click on my computer > click on manage > click on device manager on the left panel. If you see any yellow exclamation marks or red circles under "Universal Serial Bus controllers" that means your USB host controller is not working properly or missing a driver. In such case, please contact the motherboard manufacturer to request the correct driver for your USB host controller. | |
| • Check Device Manger to confirm the USB host controller is properly configured - | |
| To open device manager (Window XP / Windows 2000) right click on my computer > choose manage > choose the device manager icon from the tree. If the host controller is in other devices?then additional drivers are required for the host, check with the PCI card vendor or motherboard vendor for the appropriate drivers. USB 2.0 controllers usually require a service pack to operate properly. Windows added support for USB 2.0 in Service pack 2 and Windows 2000 added support USB 2.0 support in service pack 3 and improved the support in service pack 4. If the host controller is not seen in device manager then it is probably disabled in the computer BIOS. | |
| • Check Device Manager to confirm the USB hard drive is detected and configured properly - | |
| If not, disconnect and reconnect the drive using a different USB port. | |
| • Is the power LED lit on both the drive and the power adapter? - | |
| Make sure the drive has power. The power LED should be lit on both the drive and the power adapter. Sometimes it helps to temporarily remove any surge protectors and plug directly to the AC outlet on the wall. | |
| • Try another cable and host adapter - | |
| If after following the steps above you still have a problem then try another cable and another USB port. | |
2a. Drive clicks when I plug it in and does not show up in My Computer:
2b. I am sure the drive works and everything is connected properly, but nothing shows up in My Computer...
| i. This error commonly occurs with the Portable drive if it is plugged into a USB 1.x port or into an un-powered USB hub. If you are using the drive with a Powered hub or with a USB 2.0 port this should not be necessary. If drive does not appear in "My Computer" please refer to Chapter 3: Formatting external hard drive in page 5 to reinitialize and re-format your hard drive. This is common for a new unformatted hard drive. The same problem might occur if the hard drive is not formatted to the recognizable format of the operating system. Reformatting the hard drive will normally fix this issue. |
| ii. Is your new drive partitioned / formatted? Before a new hard disk can be used, it must be partitioned and formatted to the recognizable format of the operating system. To partition and format a new disk under Windows XP, right click on my computer > click on manage > click on disk management on the left panel. On the right hand side you should see a list of all drives connected to your computer. Find the new unallocated drive in black color, it should say for example “74.53 GB unallocated”. Right click on it > click on new partition > a new partition wizard window pops up, click on next > select primary partition and click next > select partition size in MB and click next > assign new drive letter and click next > format this partition using default values and click next > click finish. Windows will now partition and format your new disk so it can be used by the operating system (i.e. shows up as usable drive in My Computer). It may take up to 30 minutes or more to format a 500 GB or larger drive. |
3. Windows will not allow me to safe remove my drive. It keeps reporting the drive is busy or in use:
| This is usually caused by programs that are still accessing the drive and its contents. Common causes are open Word documents on the drive or open Explorer showing the content of the drive. Close them all and try again. |
4. Windows reports that a high speed device is plugged into a low speed port:
| i. This means you have plugged the USB 2.0 drive into a USB 1.X port. Your drive will still work, but at reduced speed. For best performance use USB 2.0 ports and USB 2.0 HI-Speed certified cables (included with Eagle drives). |
5. My external drive reports a delayed write failure in Windows XP:
| i. Do you have an older desktop or laptop USB port? Older desktops and laptops sometimes do not supply enough current to the 5V line on USB ports. This usually leads to "Write delay failure" or "Drive not found" on drives that draw power from USB ports. All our 2.5" portable drives come with a secondary USB (like a Y splitter) that you can plug into adjacent USB port for additional power. ii. Are you using USB hubs or HI-Speed cables? Make sure your USB hub is powered by a separate power adapter or the drive may not get enough power from the USB ports. Make sure your USB cable is certified for USB 2.0 HI-Speed transfer (included with Eagle drives) to ensure clean data signals. |
| iii. Are you using Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and a Firewall? Delayed write failure errors have many causes, most of which are specific to individual computers. However, one of the most common causes is that some of the communication going between the computer and the external drive can be blocked by a firewall. Windows XP SP2 has an added feature called a firewall which helps protect your system from being accessed from the outside. This firewall feature is enabled by default when you install Service Pack 2 and it can block transfers from/to the external drive. This normally happens on the 1394 port, but has also been seen on the USB port. As a troubleshooting step, TEMPORARILY disable the firewall and transfer data to and from the drive. This will confirm if the firewall is the cause of the delayed write error you are seeing. BE SURE TO ENABLE THE FIREWALL AFTER TROUBLESHOOTING IS COMPLETE. To disable the Firewall in XP SP2: Open Control Panel > Double click the Firewall icon > Select the OFF option (Diagram1)  Diagram 1If this fixes the issue, you may be able to go to the advanced tab (Diagram 2) and uncheck the 1394 connection and USB connections to disable firewall on those connections (if those connections are only used for the external drive).  Diagram 2If there is a pop-up when trying to transfer data, then clicking the allow option for requests from the USB or 1394 port and that will open the USB / 1394 ports. Be sure to pay close attention to what you are allowing through your firewall, you may not want to allow some programs access to your computer or the internet. Remember - TURN THE FIREWALL BACK ON AFTER TROUBLESHOOTING. |
6. My Hard Drive is showing less than the advertised space
|
It is an interesting coincidence that every tenth power of two is approximately equal to every third power of ten. This has resulted in two different definitions of these numbering systems. The terms Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, etcetera can mean either of two different things depending on the context in which it is used. Obviously this can, and often does, result in confusion, especially in respect to hard disk size measurements, where both measurements are often used.
This is the industry standard, and all major disk drive manufacturers employ this definition. Capacity Calculations Different applications like FDISK, CHKDSK, Windows, BIOS, etc., use different methods and numbering systems to calculate hard drive capacities. The two most common numeric representations of the hard drive capacity are presented in the base 10 (decimal) and base 2 (binary) numbering systems. The basic formula to calculate the capacity of a drive is: Cylinders * Heads * Sectors * 512 (bytes per sector) This formula calculates a number representing the total number of bytes (characters) that can be stored on the hard drive. This is a decimal number, to convert this number to the decimal equivalent of the binary Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB), this value must be divided by the decimal value of a binary MB or GB. The decimal equivalent of 1 MB (220) is 1,048,576 and 1 GB (230) is 1,073,741,824. Example for a 3.5 GB hard drive: 6,800 * 16 * 63 * 512 = 3,509,452,800 bytes or 3.5 GB using 106 or decimal values The equivalent in binary MB is 3,509,452,800 / 1,048,576 = 3,346 MB The equivalent in binary GB is 3,509,452,800 / 1,073,741,824 = 3.268 GB 160GB shows roughly ~150GB 200GB shows roughly ~186GB 250GB shows roughly ~237GB | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Note: | Disk size may differ for different products. The above space shown is for reference purpose only. Please check with hard drive manufacturer for more details on drive space. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
7. My Hard Drive is showing 2 drives which are 191GB one is 45GB respectively but I ordered a single
250GB hard drive:
| This is common because the hard drive is formatted to FAT32 files system which only supports the maximum capacity of 200GB per format. Therefore a 250GB hard drive formatted to FAT32 can only be done by formatting to 200GB and 50GB respectively. |
8. My Hard Drive is showing only 137GB but I ordered a larger hard drive:
| This is very common if you did not update your Windows 2000/XP to the latest service pack. For Windows 98SE/ME there is a driver for supporting large hard drives for the designated brand of hard drive used, like Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital. If this does not help, the only easy way is to format your hard drive in Windows 2000/XP in FAT32 but in at least 2 evenly divided partitions for full detection. |