Lacie hard drive asking for disk to be loaded

[Mccads]

My hard drive has just started asking me to load a disk and that as far as I can get - any suggestions??

[Xlphos]

Hello,

Could you give a little more detail please?

eg, when does this message come up, when did it start to happen etc..

[Mccads]

Hi Xlphos,

I left this drive switched off for several weeks, when I fired it up again it asked me to 'Please insert a disk in drive E:.

I tried changing USB port and also the USB cable. I dicconected the drive and tried again - no luck.

I also tried changing the Drive letter with no effect.

The only things that have happend since I last used this drive are:

I removed another Lacie hard drive which had ceased to power up.

I connected a new Seagate portable drive - which worked fine even when I used the same port as the 'offending' drive.

Thanks for your interest

Cheers

McCads

[gerbil]

Perhaps it wants to load the LaCie drivers?

[Mccads]

Perhaps it wants to load the LaCie drivers?

Thanks Gerbil, downloaded and installed the latest driver - it did not solve the problem
Cheers

McCads

[gerbil]

Okay... let's see... Windows does not know your drive by its drive letter, that is just a tag it applies to simplify things for us.. ["I also tried changing the Drive letter with no effect."].
HKLM/System/MountedDevices.

"The MountedDevices subkey stores the database of mounted devices for the NTFS file system. This database associates persistent volume names with unique internal indentifiers [guid] for volumes. The internal identifiers often include the disk signatures of the volumes. This pairing enables NTFS to maintain the identity and persistent name of a volume, even when its variable device name changes.
NTFS uses this subkey to support mounted drives on all types of volumes, including removable drives and CD-ROM drives."-M$.

The \??\Volume{... entry is the volume name; double-click an entry, a window should pop with text representing that drive's guid.
eg. \??\STORAGE#RemovableMedia#7&23909c82&0&RM#{and remainder}
The \DosDevices\... entry relates the volume name via that same guid to the drive letter associated with it currently.
eg. \DosDevices\K:
Windows keeps track of all removable storage-devices ever connected. So the moment you connect e.g. a USB-storage-device a new entry will be added to the list. The reason for this is that you're able to access a specific storage-device even if the drive-letter changes or if it even has no drive-letter assigned. The Logical Volume Manager of Windows uses this to show you a list of available devices, even the ones that have no drive letter assigned. If you change the partitioning of a device then it is given a new volume name.
So...:) in case there is confusion identifying your drive you could note your device at \Dos Devices\"its drive letter": and next associate it with its \??\Volume {....} entry. [to find which one you will have to dclick on each, read the upper part of the ASCII interpretation to identify the drive] until you find the correct one... then delete both entries.
Restart your machine, the drive should be re-associated.
Or simply delete the whole MountedDevices key and restart; it will be recreated with new volume names for all currently connected drives.

[Mccads]

Hi Gerbil,

Thanks again for your advice - Your reply is way above my skill level - I have a friend who may be on your wave length - I will let you know the results.

Cheers

Mccads

[gerbil]

If you wished to do what i suggest in the last line of that post, then just copy the text in the box to a notepad [format/wordwrap unchecked] and save as fixMD.bat to your desktop; dclick it to run... It will first export that key to your desktop for your peace of mind. :)

reg export "HKLM\System\MountedDevices" "%userprofile%\desktop\MounDev.reg"
reg delete "HKLM\System\MountedDevices" /f
pause

Then just restart. And to import that same file to the registry for whatever reason just rdlick it on your desktop, choose Merge [or Open with, Registry editor.... if you see that instead]. But importing it will revert your registry, so if the LaCie works after the restart importing it would set you back.
Amaze your techie friend.