Two identical USB hard drives into one computer

[unixman_again]

Just got a call from a teacher, who has a Sony USB h/d plugged into his computer. He had plugged another identical h/d into the PC and it wasn't recognised. His laptop did recognise it though, so he knew it was working OK. After much messing about, I found out that these particular W7 machines (both PC and laptop) didn't like having both Sony drives plugged it at once. If you did this, only one was recognised. My PC is the same.

 

Is this a fault of W7, a fault of Sony or a mix of both? If W7 can't handle two identical drives, that is complete pants! My Linux box at home has two identical Toshiba USB drives plugged in and both can be mounted at the same time.

[LeMarchand]

Have the 2 drives got an autorun or similar giving them both the same drive letter?

[LosOjos]

Did you check it was being picked up in Disk Management?

 

I've had issues where Windows hasn't assigned a drive letter to a removable drive, resulting in nothing showing up in My Computer. If it shows in Disk Management, you can manually assign a drive letter.

[Steve21]

Got 4x 6TB Samsung drives plugged into same Win7 pc and all work here.

 

Only thing I can think of is if for some reason they have same unique IDs or memory ranges etc.

 

Steve

[unixman_again]

In disk management, there was no drive letter assigned to the second USB disk. Dunno why though, 'cus when I inserted a USB stick into the same port that was assigned. Anyway, I assigned a drive letter and it works. Thanks to the panel for their invaluable help.