My new PC can't see my LaCie extenal firewire 400 drive. In the old
days of SCSI I used to have all kinds of tools that would scan the
SCSI bus and tell me what drives were found, and sometimes force them
to mount, but with firewire i don't have any tools.

Is there anything out there for windows XP that can help me?  I know
the drive it good, since it comes up when i plug it into other
computers.  Other firewire drives come up on this one, so i know the
port is good.

help.

thanx in advnce,

Did you try installing all the proper drivers? If so make sure the
drivers are Windows XP compatible, it that is what you are using, or
if they are Windows compatible with the version you are using. A lot
of drivers built for XP will not work with windows 98 and vice versa.

what drivers.  firewire drives dont need driver , XP knows how to deal
with them.  My drive did not come with a cd, and that is a good thing.

Go into Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management.
Under storage, go into disk management. If the drive is being
recognized by the system as a data storage device, it should appear
here. If it does not, the system is not detecting the drive.

Also, I'm assuming that you have partitoned & formatted the drive
since you purchased it.

Best of Luck,
Wiz

Yes, I did partitoned & formatted the drive and put stuff on it on
another PC.  Now this new PC wont't see it.  I tied disk management,
but it doesn't see it either. Any thoughts.

Almost all periphals need drivers of some sort, even though Windows XP
knows how to handle it, a lot of times simply installing a driver will
fix the problem. I had the same problem with a printer, a lot
different, but all I did was installed the drivers, and it began
working for me. If not go to the manufacturers website and see if
there are any drivers for it. If so, download and install them. Or,
you're firewire port may have gone bad. Are you using a firewire to
USB or direct firewire port? Now that I think about it, I had a
similar problem with a digital camera memory reader. It went through
my FireWire port and read it like a mini-HDD. I do beleive I had to
find some drivers for it. But I also remember having to do something
else to get it to pick it up and let me pull files off of it.

      Another question, Which service pack do you have installed on
your PC? I just checked the LaCie website and there is some
information about compatibility with SP 2. Go to "
http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers/ " Look down to the second box of
information, there is a download and a .PDF document about Windows XP
SP 2 compatibility.