Windows 7 Hitachi Touro USB 3 connection issues

[igloo01]

Hi,

I brought a Hitachi USB 3.0 Touro Desk Pro external HDD a few months ago. It's never been smooth sailing with it, and I've finally given up and am asking for help.

The drive I have is here: Touro Desk Pro | HGST, a Western Digital company

The issue is that, when I connect it up, the computer seems to detect the drive but the light on the front of the drive's case does not light up and the drive is not shown in My Computer. In disc management it shows it as not initialised. When I try to initialise it there's immediately an error. I have tried the drive in both my USB 2 and USB 3 sockets.

In the past I've managed to get it to work using a combination of restarts and unplugging/plugging in, but no luck this time.

Should Windows 7 be able to detect the drive and use it? I have an i5-2400 CPU with Win 7 64 bit.

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[Joe S]

First make sure your USB drivers are all up to date. With the drive connected try going into the device manager and delete it's driver then disconnect and reboot the system then reconnect the driver. Sometimes a driver gets corrupt and that will load a fresh one. Are there any other drivers associated with the drive? WD has a SES driver if so do the same for that one.
Joe

 

[igloo01]

First make sure your USB drivers are all up to date. With the drive connected try going into the device manager and delete it's driver then disconnect and reboot the system then reconnect the driver. Sometimes a driver gets corrupt and that will load a fresh one. Are there any other drivers associated with the drive? WD has a SES driver if so do the same for that one.
Joe

Hi Joe,

Thanks for the reply. I tried deleting the driver earlier today - I just deleted 2 of the USB drivers, but I was not sure which one was correct. Is that the best way to do it? Would Windows automatically pick up the USB 3 drivers? I don't think there are any specific drivers, or at least I cannot find any on their website.

To add to the confusion, I turned my computer on this evening with the drive plugged in and the blue light is on on the front of the drive but Windows still says it needs to be initialized and is not showing the drive in My Computer.

Thanks,
Simon

 

[Joe S]

Have you tried a different USB cable? Also make sure you're not using a cable longer than the one supplied and don't connect through a hub. Sometimes moving the power adapter straight to the wall plug instead of the surge protector makes a difference also. Does Hitachi have a support forum? I'm not familiar with Hitachi products and just passing on what I've seen at WD forums. If they do you might find some tweak there.
Joe

 

[igloo01]

Have you tried a different USB cable? Also make sure you're not using a cable longer than the one supplied and don't connect through a hub. Sometimes moving the power adapter straight to the wall plug instead of the surge protector makes a difference also. Does Hitachi have a support forum? I'm not familiar with Hitachi products and just passing on what I've seen at WD forums. If they do you might find some tweak there.
Joe

Thanks for the reply. I have solved the problem, but don't really understand why! I tried your comment about not plugging it into a surge protector. I plugged it into a normal extension lead and it seems to be working fine, on USB 2 or USB3. I then plugged it into the wall (after a bit of furniture moving!) and it has the same problems as before! It seems to only work when plugged into a specific extension lead :-/ Any idea why?! Thanks for the help so far, at least I can sort of use it now

 

[Joe S]

Glad you made some progress. These drives are very sensitive to voltage. The surge protectors can reduce voltage slightly. The thing with the wall socket and extention cord may have to do with the contact the plugs makes, that's just a guess.
Joe

 

[igloo01]

Glad you made some progress. These drives are very sensitive to voltage. The surge protectors can reduce voltage slightly. The thing with the wall socket and extention cord may have to do with the contact the plugs makes, that's just a guess.
Joe

Thanks for the help Joe S. I've sent a message to the support forum to see whether they are able to send out a new plug (in case it's the plug itself). If not, I guess the solution is to use the one extension lead that seems to work!