USB Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Why won’t my external hard drive work through my USB hub?

Posted on September 8, 2017

Question from Erica P.: Hi Rick! I have a question that I hope you can answer for me.

I have an older Seagate 200 GB external hard drive that has lots of wonderful family photos that I’ve scanned over the years stored on it.

The drive works fine when I plug it directly into a USB port, but it won’t work at all when I plug it into my 4-port USB hub. I really need to use the hub because my PC is under my desk and the USB ports are a pain to get to.

Do you think I need to buy a new hub? I don’t think the one I have is bad because I have my printer and webcam plugged into it, and they both work just fine. Thanks for any advice you can give me!

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why is my USB external hard drive not working with my new USB 3.0 card?

Posted on June 18, 2015

Question from Derick T.: Hi Rick. I had been wanting to add some USB 3.0 ports to my HP desktop PC for a while now. I finally broke down and bought a USB 3.0 expansion card (#ad) and installed it.

The new USB ports work fine with my USB mouse, keyboard and printer, but when I plug my Seagate external USB hard drive into it I can’t get the computer to recognize the drive. I know it should work because the box the drive came in said it works with USB 3.0. Am I doing something wrong?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why won’t my external USB hard drive work in a front USB connector?

Posted on November 6, 2014

Question from Dreama L.: I have a Lenovo desktop computer with Windows 7. I bought an external USB hard drive to make backups with, and it works great when plugged into one of the USB connectors on the back of the PC. It won’t work at all when it’s plugged into the front connectors though.

I’d really like to be able to plug the drive into the front of the computer, make the backup, then unplug it and set it on a shelf until I need to use it again. Can you tell me how to get the drive to work with a front mounted USB connector?

Rick‘s answer: [Read more…]

Why wait for USB 3.1 when you can buy a reversible USB cable today?

Posted on December 9, 2013

The other day I wrote a post in which I discussed how the upcoming USB 3.1 specification is going to call for USB cables that will plug into the socket either way without having to worry about “which way is up”. In my opinion, that will be a huge step forward.

Well, an alert reader sent me an email this morning letting me know that Tripp-Lite already sells a line of reversible USB 2.0 cables that you can buy right now – and they’re surprisingly inexpensive! [Read more…]

How to fix “USB Device Not Recognized” error

Posted on April 19, 2013

microsoft-windows If you’ve been using Microsoft Windows for a while you have surely seen the “USB Device Not Recognized” error balloon pop up after plugging in a USB device.

This happens fairly often, and most of the time unplugging the device and plugging it back in will fix the problem. But what if you start getting this error every time you plug in a USB device?

If all of your USB devices start generating this error when you plug them in, there is an easy fix: [Read more…]