Smartware My Book WD 1TB hardrive not recognised by Vista

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I plug the hard drive into WinXP, it installs the driver (I don’t install the software), hard drive is recognised as well as the CD part.

Same with the Windows 7 computer.

I plug this hard drive into a Vista Ultimate laptop, it sees the CD, but if I try to install the smartware, it says no writable partition?

I want to use this drive to back up all my computers onto. Why does it work with two computers and not the Vista computer?

2

Did you try the USB cable in a different port?

Joe

3

Yes I did. When I plug in the Drive, it is recognised as far as seeing the virtual CD drive but will not progress any further. If try to install the software etc so I can progress further, it says there is no writable partition.

I have already used this drive on two other computers, only Vista fails to see the drive correctly.

4

Did you install the Smartware on the other 2 PCs? Did you turn off your antivirus and anti spyware? Are you using Windows firewall? It seems like somebody recently discovered that was the problem on getting the drive recognized.

Joe

5

On both Windows XP & Windows 7, I plugged in the drive, for Windows XP it wanted to install some driver. Windows 7 was fine. I did nothing special, did not turn off any anti virus etc.

Did the same on Vista, it got as far as the virtual CD drive and won’t install anything not even it’s own software. It does not recognise a writable partition.

On the Vista computer, I went to install the software thinking perhaps Vista needs it but it would install because there was no partition to install the software.

The virtual CD drive was recognised as E drive, but the external drive did not show. On both Windows XP and Windows 7, the CD drive was recognised as well as the external drive.

Perhaps the drive is not compatible with Vista.

6

Problem has now been solved. I checked the Virtual Drive Service to make sure that it was started and restarted it, I then went into Disk Management and noted that it did not have a drive letter so for the sake of a drive letter, gave it “M”.

Vista now reads the disk.

So, step one - make sure Virtual Drive Service is started, if not start it.

Step two - make sure in Disk Management you can see the drive, if you can and it has no drive letter, give it one.

Vista is now backing up to the drive.

:smileyvery-happy: