external hard drive Seagate 320 gb SATA NOT DETECTED by windows 7

Hi Vinod, tried all  your steps. still nothing.  The LED light of external hard drive is on when connected to USB Port, but it is not being detected. It does not show up anywhere on the comp. I think the problem may have started after some windows 7 update.

"Hi there! I have a very strange problem lately. All of a sudden my external Seagate Hard Drive 320 GB SATA is NOT Showing up in the My Computer page. It was working fine earlier. I have checked the USB port which is working fine with my Pen Drive. Even the red light in the external hard drive is ON but it is not being detected by my computer. The drive was an internal laptop hard drive which was converted to an external hard drive by covering it with a Casing. It does not have any other power source input other than being connected to a laptop via a cable thru a USB port. It was working fine earlier. My system is a Dell Studio laptop 1558 64 Bit with Windows Home Premium installed. PLEASE HELP!!!"

I went to the Properties of all USB Root Hubs/Generic USB Hubs and unchecked the Power Management option of "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". All drivers are up to date. Still it is not detecting the hard drive. I know the hard drive is fine because the light is on whenever I connect it to the USB port, also it was working perfectly earlier. Is a Windows update the culprit? Or could it be the Tweaking Softwares which tune up the Windows OS to speed up the system? What exactly is the issue here? And I can see that I am not the only one facing this problem with my Windows 7, half the world has the same problem! PLEASE HELP!!! ANYONE?

Well, the Segate drive (momentus 7200.4  320GB) is now showing up as a letter E: in my comp, but it still won't open up! It is showing as Capacity 0 bytes, Used Space 0 Bytes, Free space 0 Bytes.  There is nearly a 100GB of data in it. How can I make Windows 7 to open this drive?

Also, when I go to Tools, after Properties....there is an option for checking the drive for errors with a Windows button, "CHECK NOW".....But when I click on that button, a message shows up saying "The disk check could not be performed because Windows can't access the disk".

Now that's what the problem is....Windows can't access the disk! So how to make Windows access the disk?

1. Yes, the drive is working on other computers.
2. It was working fine about a month or so ago.
3. Windows automatically Updates regularly. Could it because of installation of windows tweaking softwares like Uniblue Power Suite, Driver Genius Pro, TuneUp Utilities??
4. The external hard drive does NOT get detected anywhere, even after changing the view option of Device Manager to show Hidden Devices.

Followed all the steps suggested by you, but still no result.

The LED light of the hard drive is in a Solid ON state, which means drive is active but idle.

I am sure it is some kind of WINDOWS 7 issue as half the world is having the same problem. SO PLEASE HELP!!!

Hi,

1.       Does the same external hard drive work on any other computer?

2.       When was the last time it was working fine?

3.       Did you make any changes to the computer before the issue occurred?

4.       Does the external hard drive get detected in Device Manager?

I would suggest you to try the steps provided below and check if it helps

Step 1: Try the steps from the link below

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Open-the-Hardware-and-Devices-troubleshooter

Additional information: Try the steps from the below link suggested by Seagate support

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=194531

If the issue persists I would suggest you to contact the manufacturer for further support on drivers on the below mentioned link -

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/

Hope this information is helpful.