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mac & pc formatting problem..

D

daysgoby

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2008
29
0
hey guys
i have this pain in the rear plus massive headache everytime i think about my windows pc...

I bought Western digital (another brand that gives me headache consistantly) passport HD. its one of those tiny external harddrive that you can easily carry around.

I formatted this on Mac using MS-DOS Fat32.. works fine on mac.. but on PC, when i connect it, it says FOUND NEW HARDWARE. its a FREAKIN USB DEVICE! what do i need to install... (using xp by the way) soo.. of course i don't have any drivers for it and western digital website doesn't have any.. support forum doesn't have any on this issue.. i couldn't find it anyway.

how can i solve this problem??
 
daysgoby said:
hey guys
i have this pain in the rear plus massive headache everytime i think about my windows pc...
...
Click to expand...

Um... pain in the rear? Check! Massive headache? Check! Windows PC? Check!

Prescription: Get off your ass and throw the PC in the trash can and use a Mac! :D

Seriously, have you thought about formatting the external drive with the PC? The Mac should have no trouble reading it and it might make the PC happier!
 
i would format it with pc if i could.. but i cant even get pc to recognize it as usb external harddrive.. everytime i connect it i get 'found new hardware'
 
When you get "found new hardware" do you let it go through the process of installing it? It may take a minute or two to make it ready for use. I would expect that XP has the drivers already. If not, they either came on a CD with the disk or can be downloaded from the WD site.
 
ggjstudios said:
When you get "found new hardware" do you let it go through the process of installing it? It may take a minute or two to make it ready for use. I would expect that XP has the drivers already. If not, they either came on a CD with the disk or can be downloaded from the WD site.
Click to expand...

i tried.. didn't work. found no driver.. doesn't tell me to insert cd for installation.. nothing on WD website to download. I'm very very near the edge of not buying any WD product in the future plus any WINDOWS machines..

on the lighter side of thing.. loving iCal on mac
 
What's the exact model of the WD hard drive? Let me see if I can find the drivers for you.
 
ggjstudios said:
What's the exact model of the WD hard drive? Let me see if I can find the drivers for you.
Click to expand...

it says

MDL: WD1600XMS-00

i couldn't find the exact model for some reason. i think its the essential.
got it from costco

thank you for your help
 
you shouldn't need drivers for that. i suspect something else is wrong here. It should detect it as an external drive, but the exact notification i cant recall off the top of my head. you could try right clicking on My Computer > Manage and go to hard disks. See if its even recognized as a drive by the computer, or go to Device Manager and check whats under hard disks/drives and USB controllers.
 
e12a said:
you shouldn't need drivers for that. i suspect something else is wrong here. It should detect it as an external drive, but the exact notification i cant recall off the top of my head. you could try right clicking on My Computer > Manage and go to hard disks. See if its even recognized as a drive by the computer, or go to Device Manager and check whats under hard disks/drives and USB controllers.
Click to expand...

not recogzized
big question mark shows up in the device manager
 
You need to go to Computer Management, click on the disk and choose initialize in order for windows to recognize it. I have no idea why, but I've had to do it too.
 
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