Referring to my article “External hard drives not working in Vista!” I did some more research and invested a lot of time googling and binging and finally found some reasons as to why the external hard drives were not working in Vista. One of the reasons was Vista itself. Well, I had to download and install the SP1 update to get some better configured USB drivers for Vista. I also had to apply the Cummulative update for USB core devices on Vista.

After those updates my USB drives started working. I also had a problem with my hard drive casing and had to replace it. One of the Tx lines was a bit damaged in the IDE interface clamp. So finally my hard drives are working. For all the people facing similar problems, please troubleshoot it in the following manner.

Step 1: Upgrade Vista to SP1 and apply the cummulative upgrade for USB core components for Vista. URLs are given in the article above.

After this step check your devices. If it still doesn’t work then check your hardware. The hard disk cabinet might be a problem. Another problem might be the IDE interface. In my case, one of the interface pins was a bit damaged. I had to replace it. Even when it was damaged, my hard drive was getting proper power and stuff which made me to believe that the hard disk cabinet was working properly. Anyways, check your connections and it should work fine.

If your hard disk has data on it which you want back then never initialize it as posted on some forums and by users who are facing this problem. That is the worst thing you could do to your hard disk and data. Also don’t use any of the external partition recovery tools which can potentially damage your NTFS records.

Have fun and hope this information helps you solve the issues if you face any. Again no special drivers are needed for any kind of external hard disk cabinet you use.