Hi all,
Recently, I bought a Gericom 250GB external HDD (the hard drive is a Seagate ST-3250823A Barracuda) from Aldi, and it is formatted in FAT32.
My computer's specs are;
Windows XP home ed. SP2...NTFS
CPU...AMD Athlon 2000+
768DDRAM
80GB HDD....75% free
USB 2.0...4 port host controller
USB 1.1...4 ports
I followed the makers instructions on installation. As my Operating System is XP a driver isn't required to set up the HDD. So the drive is plug and play straight out of the box.
I connected the HDD up, switched on and according to the booklet an icon should be installed in 'My Computer', this didn't happen a first, but after a several sec's the icon appeared as, Local Disk I:, then it disappeared, appeared again, disappeared and so on. While the disappearing act was going on a blue LED was flickering on the ext HDD this was accompanied by a series of clicks going on inside the HDD. The thing was unstable. After a while the HDD settled down so I checked that it was being recognized by the PC. It was OK in Device Manager and the same in Disk Management. So I thought it was just an initial problem and everything was now OK.
The first thing I done was try and transfer a batch of photo images. That failed, no message to tell of a failure. NOTHING!
Realising that the HDD was formatted in FAT32 and my PC is NTFS I thought I'd better convert the ext HDD to match my own system (NTFS). I tried to format through Windows, that failed. I tried through Disk Management, that also failed. Each time the formatting reaches 99.9% then stops and a message says 'Windows was unable to complete the format'. I then tried Partition Magic 8.0 and that failed.
I have Googled my way through many sites and forums (and they are difficult to find) and although some are having the same problem as me, many haven't had any problems at all. But no one can offer a solution.
I've tried the Gericom site and the site is a joke.
I was left hanging on the Customer help line for 25 mins (listening to the Spice Girls. Uugghh!) I give up on that.
I've been told that updating my BIOS could be one solution, but I'm not confident in that area so I am a little scared to go there
Which brings me to this forum. Does anyone have a fix or has anyone experienced the same problem?
All help appreciated
Recently, I bought a Gericom 250GB external HDD (the hard drive is a Seagate ST-3250823A Barracuda) from Aldi, and it is formatted in FAT32.
My computer's specs are;
Windows XP home ed. SP2...NTFS
CPU...AMD Athlon 2000+
768DDRAM
80GB HDD....75% free
USB 2.0...4 port host controller
USB 1.1...4 ports
I followed the makers instructions on installation. As my Operating System is XP a driver isn't required to set up the HDD. So the drive is plug and play straight out of the box.
I connected the HDD up, switched on and according to the booklet an icon should be installed in 'My Computer', this didn't happen a first, but after a several sec's the icon appeared as, Local Disk I:, then it disappeared, appeared again, disappeared and so on. While the disappearing act was going on a blue LED was flickering on the ext HDD this was accompanied by a series of clicks going on inside the HDD. The thing was unstable. After a while the HDD settled down so I checked that it was being recognized by the PC. It was OK in Device Manager and the same in Disk Management. So I thought it was just an initial problem and everything was now OK.
The first thing I done was try and transfer a batch of photo images. That failed, no message to tell of a failure. NOTHING!
Realising that the HDD was formatted in FAT32 and my PC is NTFS I thought I'd better convert the ext HDD to match my own system (NTFS). I tried to format through Windows, that failed. I tried through Disk Management, that also failed. Each time the formatting reaches 99.9% then stops and a message says 'Windows was unable to complete the format'. I then tried Partition Magic 8.0 and that failed.
I have Googled my way through many sites and forums (and they are difficult to find) and although some are having the same problem as me, many haven't had any problems at all. But no one can offer a solution.
I've tried the Gericom site and the site is a joke.
I was left hanging on the Customer help line for 25 mins (listening to the Spice Girls. Uugghh!) I give up on that.
I've been told that updating my BIOS could be one solution, but I'm not confident in that area so I am a little scared to go there
Which brings me to this forum. Does anyone have a fix or has anyone experienced the same problem?
All help appreciated
