I have an external hardrive that used to work on my laptop (I am using Vista)
but now comes up as a generic F drive and doesn't recognise the hard drive.
It gives the option of re-formatting which I don't want to do cause it will
wipe my hard drive. I have spoken to a friend who says it's the Vista drivers
that are the problem
How do I get my laptop to recognise the hard drive again?

Take a look in your device manager first to see if any devices are not
configured properly ( points to drivers or hardware that need to be fixed).
I have several external hard drives (one IDE, one SATA), and have no
problem with either on multiple versions of Vista. Check your
motherboard manufacturer for motherboard driver updates and the external
drive manufacturer for driver updates.


Rachael wrote:
I have an external hardrive that used to work on my laptop (I am using Vista)
but now comes up as a generic F drive and doesn't recognise the hard drive.
It gives the option of re-formatting which I don't want to do cause it will
wipe my hard drive. I have spoken to a friend who says it's the Vista drivers
that are the problem
How do I get my laptop to recognise the hard drive again?