External Hard Drive files not showing up in My Computer

Alright, I know there are some smart guys and gals on here and my problem (besides having Vista on my home PC) is that I am having trouble with two different, external hard drives. Both of these hard drives until the other day would try to autorun their respective preinstalled softwares (already on the external drives) but I could easily cancel and then just view the contents of the drive like any other file structured drive and copy and paste, move files, etc. It worked with either of the external drives. Then the other day on the home Vista system, I went to do another disk image backup and attached the 500GB external and it tried to autorun its Western Digital software and I stopped it and just went to check the actual contents of the drive. That is when all I saw on it was the WD software...2 icons and when I went to properties it showed a disk size of KB's instead of GB. The drive was nowhere near full and when I hooked it up to a PS3, I was able to see some of the files. Same with the 250 GB external. It would only show the preloaded software icons and folders, but none of the backup data files. I brought it to work and it saw everything.

I've tried multiple USB ports and nothing. It is the weirdest thing. The only two things I've done recently was to install a USB printer, which oddly wants to show up under mass storage but it has been working and a Sonos wireless sound system.

Also, a 2GB USB memory stick works find and I can see the files on there...any ideas?

Skiman said:

*sub *

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What does that mean?

Did you test the hard drive for errors on Windows?
Edit: just reread your post. Did you say you can take it to work and it works no problem?

Could be a mounting problem? Can't offer any advice except make sure all the data is backed up while you can see it at work.

Custo said:

Did you test the hard drive for errors on Windows?
Edit: just reread your post. Did you say you can take it to work and it works no problem?

Click to expand...

Yes and it can be read on my PS3.

Lejuan said:

Could be a mounting problem? Can't offer any advice except make sure all the data is backed up while you can see it at work.

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It shows my disc image backup when connected to my PS3 or work computer. But I am talking about TWO different EXT HDD's only showing up the basic preinstalled software when you click on them in My Computer. There actual saved files do not show.

It might be hidden, follow these steps to display hidden files and folders.


1.
Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.

2.
Click the View tab.

3.
Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, and then click OK

Thanks, i got that setting. The external HDD is showing up as a CD Drive with 0 bytes free of 884kb. It's a 250 GB Ext. HDD that works fine on PS3. Is there any setting that may have bumped what Vista sees external USB drives as?

You can try using a restore point if you have one or check out this link to fix driver issues:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic145884.html#post875300

Lejuan said:

Could be a mounting problem?

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Are you suggesting that he's failing to mount properly?

smc100 said:

You can try using a restore point if you have one or check out this link to fix driver issues:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic145884.html#post875300

Click to expand...

Thanks, this may be it actually as I saw a lot of drivers listed. I'll try it.