Hello everyone.

I'm not a complete novice with computers but I've never had to connect anything using an ethernet cable before. I recently purchased what I consider to be a relatively good external media player (http://ritmotech.com.au/onlineshop/product_info.php?products_id=386). The player has an option to connect to a computer via USB or ethernet. I am having problems doing both of these.

When I connect it via USB, Windows Vista runs through its normal process of recognising new hardware and installing the relevant files. The problem is that when I open My Computer the HDD is not recognised (it simply isn't there), yet when I open 'safely remove hardware' the HDD is listed. I'm at a loss as to explain why. I also went into 'disk management' and the HDD is not listed anywhere there either.

In regards to connecting the player via ethernet - I really don't have much of an idea because I've never connecting anything via ethernet before. I assumed this would operate the same as connecting something via USB. Do I need to set up a network or something?

Any help you can give me on this would be great thanks guys.

Cheers,

Is there are hard drive in it?

I ask because from the link you've given, it appears (though not obvious) that it does not come with a hard drive, and that it's just an enclosure (it doesn't give a hard drive capacity anywhere on the page). This could explain why no hard drive is showing up, yet you are seeing the player in USB removal list.

If that's the case, you'll need to open it up and put in your own Serial ATA hard drive. This isn't hard to do. Once there is a hard drive in there and you connect it via USB, then you will be able to activate, partition and format it via the Disk Management tool.

If there is a hard drive in there, then double check that it's working properly. Can you feel it spinning up when you switch on the unit? Does it make any noise? Could just be a faulty drive.

To connect it via Ethernet, the easiest way is via a router. This way, you will be able to access the drive and copy files to it from any computer on your network. If you don't have a network, and just use the one computer, then USB is the most efficient way to get files onto the drive.

Hello Ghost. Thanks for your

Hello Ghost.

Thanks for your reply. I can assure you, there is a HDD in there!! In fact, the HDD I have in there is from my desktop computer, which is running XP. I've done a bit of research and I've read that some people are having problems with Vista recognising HDDs that are formatted in XP. I'm not sure if thats the case here but it might be. The simple solution would be to put the HDD back into my desktop PC because thats where I transferred all of the files onto the HDD. However, my desktop PC died a horrible death recently when the power supply blew up and took out most of the components with it (motherboard, dvd burner etc).

So in answer to all of your questions. Yes there is a HDD in there. Yes it is working properly. I can play every single one of the files that are already on there. The link between the case/HDD and the TV is fine and the quality of the picture is surprisingly good considering I'm playing it on a 52" widescreen. The only problems I am having is recognising the HDD on Vista so I can upload/delete/update the contents of the HDD.

I do not want to format the HDD again. I have 400gb of movies/TV episodes that I haven't watched yet so losing that really isnt an option for me lol. The hdd isn't recognised in the program "disk management". So, even if i wanted to format it that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

I can connect the drive via ethernet to a router. It's the same router that I'm using to run the wireless internet for this laptop. How do I go about accessing the HDD from the laptop then? It would be wirelessly yes? A friend of mine enabled me to access a shared folder between my laptop and desktop PC, I'm assuming this would be similar for the HDD. How do I go about creating this shared folder and accessing it? To be honest, "network stuff" is the area of computers I am the least knowledgeable in.

Thanks for your help Ghost, look forward to your reply :).

Kindest regards,

Hello Ghost. Thanks for your

• edit - double post sorry.

Vista is able to recognise the drive if it's in Fat32 or NTFS. As the player is otherwise working, seems to be an issue either with the USB port on the player, or your laptop's configuration. The only thing i can think of is that when you plug it in via USB, it is trying to use a drive letter that is already taken up by another drive and that's why it is not showing up. But this seems unlikely as you are on a laptop. Have you tried a different USB port? Does Device Manager show any problems with your USB ports when you plug in the hard drive?

Try plugging it in to a friend's PC, or hook it up to your router and try and access it that way. As long as your laptop can see the wireless network, then it should be able to see the hard drive plugged into the network. As long as your router and the hard drive are uPnP devices, the drive will have got an IP address from your router and it should show up in My network places and you can access it from there.

If the drive doesn't show up, you'll need to find its IP address and log into its web interface. I can't find any support info for this drive anywhere, so look on the setup CD to see if it came with a network discovery tool, which can find the drive and its IP address. Alternatively, see if there is an IP address written on any documentation that came with the drive and try and use that.

If you can make it to the Web interface of the drive, then you will be able to find out if you can create folders and add files through it.

If you have problems with the networking side of things, post your router's brand and model.

Hello again mate. OK so I've

Hello again mate.

OK so I've done a bit more work on this. I've upgraded Vista to service pack 1 (was surprised this wasnt automatically done). I've uninstalled the driver for the external HDD and reinstalled it. Now, it's coming up as something different (instead of 'Samsung HDD' its coming up as 'ATAPI'). Now, it's recognised by Disk Management but it hasn't been initialised. I find this a little confusing because the disk was initialised and formatted on my desktop PC. Is there anyway of initialising a HDD without formatting it? I don't want to lose my 400gb of data.

When I ask Disk management to initialise the disk it asks me to use the MBR partition for the selected disk. I select this because the other option (GPT) is recommended for disks that are >2TB. I'm not sure why it's asking me to partition a disk which isn't even initialised.

My router is a D-Link DI-524. I connected the ethernet cable from the router to the HDD but couldn't find it on my laptop.

thanks again for your time Ghost, Cheers.

Initialization usually leads to a partition and format, so this is probably not the avenue you want to go down.

Does the drive still work when you hook up the media player to the TV? If so, i'd take out the drive, stick it in another computer to copy the data, put it back into the media drive and then format it. Of course, this means you have to have a PC and plenty of hard drive space to copy the files over.

I don't know how the D-Link works, but it you log into it using the IP address 192.168.0.1, look for a status screen of a DHCP list to see if the media drive is connected. Then you can use that IP address to try and log into it.

Hope this helps.