Post by Java JiveProblems with USB drives become more hit and miss the further back in
Windows OSs you go, and before around 2k/XP the sort of symptoms you
describe could definitely occur - I had to return one that didn't
seem to be picked up by W2k.
1) I presume it actually does have a disk in it? Or is that
something you didn't realise that you have to buy extra?
2) Has the disk been formatted? <Rt-Click> My Computer and
choose Manage. What do you see in Disk Management? If the disk is
there, can you see a partition on it? If no, create an NTFS partition
and format it (note: of course this will erase any previous contents
there may actually have been); if yes, can you assign the partition a
drive letter by <Rt-Click>ing and following the prompts?
Yes, it has a disk -- complete External drive.
Disk Management does not show Buffalo - only shows the other drives.
Windows Explorer does not show Buffalo drive.
Device Manager show Buffalo under Std Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller > USB 2.0 Root Hub > USB Mass Storage Device > Buffalo. Clicking on Buffalo, it says "working properly" and driver shown as c:/WINNT/system32/DRIVERS/disk.sys.
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Following is for any other poor sap who might have this same problem. The summary is that it was mostly luck and trying one thing after another until something worked. Was a big waste of time trying to find out how to un-mark an "active" partition. Tons of searching and microsoft tips were all dead ends.
Problem solved by trial and error. I got a quick answer from Buffalo, but it was that this drive could not be used with Win2000. So I returned it and bought a WD 1TB internal drive. I opted to keep the existing cable and got a SATA to PATA backplane adapter that fit on the hard drive - $18 but much easier than the alternates.
Tried booting with the four Win2000 boot disks and never could get past the last menu. Repair & restore options didn't work fo rme. Also kept coming up with "corrupted files".
Ended up getting access via an old Norton Windows 95 emergency disk. I couldn't really do anything with them, but it did get enough access to see that all the c: drive files were still there. End of day 2.
Next day, I removed the jumper on the old c: drive to make it a slave, restarted, hit DELETE to BIOS settings, and set the new drive to Master and old one to slave. My plan was to install Win2000 on the new drive and then copy all the files from the old c: drive.
Then, surprise surprise, It came up to the bootstrap menu. I selected Safe mode and checked everything out. Looking at Disk Mgmt again, I could see that Win2000 in the old c: drive was running the system, and that the 2nd "active" mark had been removed.
Once I was convinced all was OK, I rebooted and it started up normally.
Good for another 12,000 miles.
Next project is to installed Windows 7 so I can dual boot and starting getting up to speed. I have heard mixed comments about Win 8 and 8.1, and just good things about 7, so I'll stick with that one next.