why a HP dv6 laptop not see a 3Tb external drive

[louwin]

I have an HP dv6 laptop.  It is a Core i7 running windows 7 Premium.  I don't know the model number.

When I plug in a Seagate 3Tb external drive the laptop doesn't see it.  I have an i7 desktop that has no trouble seeing TWO of these externals.

Why doesn't the laptop see the external 3Tb drive?

If someone can tell me how I find out the model number I will be happy to oblige.

It comes with a 320Gb HDD and 4Gb but a further 4Gb was installed by the retailer when I bought it from Harvey Norman.

[erico]

Are the 3TB drives in  NAS or are they stand-alone external disks connected to your PC by USB?

Have you checked at SeaGate.com to see which firmware they recommend for your hard disks?

[Vidya]

How to find the model number of your notebook:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?tmp_renderType=findModel&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=c00033108&...=

Review this article on the use of the Seagate DiscWizard when using a hard drive beyond 2TB.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/beyond-2tb/

[louwin]

It is on the USB port.

I bought 2 Seagate 3Tb (STAY3000300) external drives and plugged them into my desktop, no problems.  I have been using them for a couple of months.

I wanted to transfer a directory to my HP Pavillion dv6 Notebook PC and the external drive isn't seen by the laptop.

Both the desktop and the laptop are running Windows 7 64bit on i7 CPUs.  The only difference is the desktop is Windows 7 Proffessional and the laptop is Windows 7 Home Premium.

They both both up to date with Windows Update.

They both seem, to me, to have very similiar specifications so why does the desktop happily access the external drives and the laptop won't?

[louwin · Accepted solution]

I am SO sorry!   

In desperation I tried another cable and it works    

I apologise for wasting everybody's time.

Would you believe though?  The ******* cable!