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Windows 7 and External Hard Disks

lordofthereef

Android Expert
I got a pair of external hard disks during black friday and am having some issues. Essentially both are visible in device manager, but Windows is only assigning one drive letter at a time. I can name the drives whatever I want (I have named them backup and sziklassy) but only one is given a drive letter at a time. The default was F: and whichever is plugged in first was being given that drive letter so if "backup" was plugged in first it would say "backup (F: )". If "sziklassy" was plugged in first it would read "sziklassy (F: )". I tried changing the drive letter of whichver was first plugged in to "G:". The situation remains the same though. If "backup" is first plugged in it becomes "backup (G: )" and if "sziklassy" is first plugged in it becomes "sziklassy (G: )". Both are still viewable under device manager but I am only able to get access to one drive at a time (I am assuimng due to the drive letter thing). They are both Seagate free agent goflex desk 2TB drives.
Any help would be appreciated!

EDIT: Edited the automatic smileys out of original post!
 
I did exactly that. THe problem is disk manager only sees one or the other. If I change the drive letter of one, unplug it, and plug the other back in, the drive letter of the one I just plugged in is the drive letter of the last.

Read my above post thoroughly. I mentioned this :)

I tried changing the drive letter of whichver was first plugged in to "G:". The situation remains the same though. If "backup" is first plugged in it becomes "backup (G: )" and if "sziklassy" is first plugged in it becomes "sziklassy (G: )". Both are still viewable under device manager but I am only able to get access to one drive at a time.
 
So if you plug both in and change the drive letter you can see both drives right? Then you unplug both of them and no matter what drive you plug in it gets g:?
 
So if you plug both in and change the drive letter you can see both drives right? Then you unplug both of them and no matter what drive you plug in it gets g:?

That is correct. DEVICE manager always sees both drives (this does not associate a drive letter). DISK manager always only sees whatever the first drive that I plugged in was, and associates whatever I change EITHER drive letter to with whatever drive that I plug in first.
 
I have no ideas then as I've never seen this issue. I use removable hdds on my Win7 computer and they seem to get the same drive letters every time.
 
Do you use two of the same exact device? Just wondering, but I am thinking this may be the issue. I tried plugging in sume usb thumb drives *flash memory) and those loaded just fine.
 
Have you put anything on the drives yet, or are they both still empty? If they are empty, I'd try plugging one in at a time, and use disk manager to delete the partition, then repartition and format the drive, let Disk manager assign a drive letter before plugging the second drive in and do the same thing to it. Not sure if it will help, but it will rewrite the Master file table on both drives, and it might help.
 
That is strange. How many other drives show under "computer"? (Dvd/R/RW, Card readers, etc?)
 
OK, We need to use a process of elimination to find the problem.

It sounds to me like you might have a RAID controller running and it is treating the two identical drives as one big one or two drives with identical data as a mirror. That could be why it is just assigning one drive letter for those drives at a time. I don't see in your posts whether this is a desktop or a laptop, but it doesn't really matter as most newer laptops are coming with RAID capabilities.

First, go to "start/run" and type in "services.msc" (without quotes) and see if there are any RAID controllers listed, and if there are, see if they're "started". If there is one you can right click on it and choose "properties" then in the middle of the page that pops up you'll see a "button" to "STOP" the service and also a drop-down menu that you can set to "Disable". But, and this is important, only do this if you're sure your main (C:\) drive is not part of a RAID array. If you or someone you know didn't set one up then it probably is not since they rarely ship systems with RAID preconfigured.

Once you stop the service and disable it, reboot the computer and try your drives again.
 
The main drive is not part of a raid array, that I know. Not sure about the other drives. To be honest I wasn't ware that external USB drives could be raid mounted. I guess I didn't see much of a point! LOL. Anyway, will look into that when I get home tonight.
 
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