Why my “Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB Hard Drive” will not appear on my computer?

Question

Just try to watch a movie on Xbox360 but the USB was not recognizable. So my brother he clicked on"configure USB Drive" and he click on "customize". Few seconds later the screen froze, restarted the Xbox360, but it still not working.

We give on watching movie on Xbox360, going back to PC, but it would not appear on "my computer". Try other USB drive works perfectly but Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB Drive just don't work. The light is on and it shows on the "Devices and Printers" but I can't not open or brows the files in the drive.

I have a Sony VAIO series laptop, Windows 7. The Seagate FreeAgent Desktop USB Drive is the exact same one like this one.

http://www.prlog.org/10180110-seagate-freeagent-desktop-500gb-external-hard-drive-st305004fdd1e1-rk.html

I don't know what to do, I have important stuff on that hard drive. Someone help me please!!!

Solution

This is normal and doesn't indicate a problem. Hard drives never appear under "My Computer". People think they're supposed to because mounted partitions with associated drive letters appear there.

Where it says Hard Disk Drives, it actually means mounted partitions on hard disk drives. Microsoft, trying to make things simple, actually created a significant source of confusion. If you take a close look with the other USB drive. You'll see it's not the drive that appears there but a mounted partition on the drive, with an associated drive letter, that appears. (That's why drives with two associated partitions appear twice.)

If the drive appears under Devices, then nothing is wrong. You can manage the drive from the Disk Manager. Type drvmgmt.msc into the Run bar.

Comments

[Prerak Diwan]

possible duplicate of Seagate FreeAgent Portable Drive suddenly doesn't want to open

[Risako N]

But when I used it yesterday, it appear on "Computer"'s Hard Dis Drive. What do I do when I get to Disk Manager and what can I do to fixed this problem?

[David Schwartz]

There's no problem to fix, this is all normal behavior. You just need to learn how to use the Disk Management to manage your disks. The problem is the belief that because it sometimes happens to do what you want by luck, it will always magically do what you want and the assumption that Hard Disk Drives should appear under My Computer. They should not as that would be almost unusably confusing. (Imagine if a disk drive had two filesystems on it. If you dragged a file to the drive, which filesystem should it go to?)

[Risako N]

I understand what you mean. The only thing is that I can't even open up the files on the hard drive. That's what it is.

[David Schwartz]

You need to mount the partition before you can open the files.

[David Schwartz]

Follow the link in my first comment to instructions on how to use Disk Management.

[Risako N]

I already follow your instruction, but still I cannot open the hard drive.

[David Schwartz]

How far do you get? What goes wrong?

[jbyrd]

I have the exact same issue - I was able to view it in Disk Management, but how the heck do I browse the files/folders on it? It appears as "Disk 1", it says it's online, and it's divided into 3 sections: 1) 200 MB (with no file system type specified) Healthy (EFI System Partition), 2) 931.19 GB, Healthy (Primary Partition), and 3) 128 MB, Unallocated. The only actions I can find are "Convert to Dynamic Disk", "Create VHD", and "Attach VHD". Am I missing something? This seems way too complicated for just viewing files on an external drive.