Can I run a win7 simulator or something?

All our old win7 etc. boxes are long dead and gone. I've not even got a record of their windows licence numbers.
And now I got two Seagate srd00f2 2T external expansion drives which can't be seen by windows.
Seagate tech help tells me to look at them with win7 !!

Well how'm I going to do that?

We have only win10 boxes now.

If I download and try set up win7 on an old machine (got a couple of wrecks around) I'll be up for another licence won't I? I don't want to pay for that.

abrogard said:

We have only win10 boxes now.

If I download and try set up win7 on an old machine (got a couple of wrecks around) I'll be up for another licence won't I? I don't want to pay for that.

If any of those old machines are oem ( hp, dell, lenovo, acer, etc ) they amost cetainly have a slic table .

Thank you Marie and S1W2. Good news. I'll see if I can do a new win7 install then. I only need it long enough to see if the drives appear and to then move stuff off them if there's anything I want.

To spunk: It's not me saying win7 is needed. It is Seagate help on a help ticket. May well be rubbish but that's what he insisted on and I may as well give it a try. Nothing else works.

Yes, we've done disk management etc., of course. I did it before contacting seagate and then politely did it all again and sent screenshots just to please them.

abrogard said:

Thank you Marie and S1W2. Good news. I'll see if I can do a new win7 install then. I only need it long enough to see if the drives appear and to then move stuff off them if there's anything I want.

To spunk: It's not me saying win7 is needed. It is Seagate help on a help ticket. May well be rubbish but that's what he insisted on and I may as well give it a try. Nothing else works.

Yes, we've done disk management etc., of course. I did it before contacting seagate and then politely did it all again and sent screenshots just to please them.

I pulled out my old HP computer that last had win 7 on it and i was happy to see it still working and being able to get the Opra browser updated and then use it to address web sites.
Not implying i think people using Win 10 or win 11 should again use the old non supported Win 7.

abrogard said:

It's not me saying win7 is needed. It is Seagate help on a help ticket. May well be rubbish but that's what he insisted on...

It is rubbish. @spunk is correct. Something else is going on.

Did you remember to plug in the external power supply to that drive? It will not power up from USB alone.

LesFerch said:

It is rubbish. @spunk is correct. Something else is going on.

Did you remember to plug in the external power supply to that drive? It will not power up from USB alone.

Well I'd rather not have to reveal this but the drive was not plugged in.

It's not quite as embarrassing as it sounds - or maybe it is worse. They are old drives and when I found them I didn't have power supplies for them. So I googled to try find what voltage I needed and polarity.

And what I got was gpt told me they didn't need any power at all. That model didn't use the power socket.

I could believe that. I've seen manufacturers alter product lines like that. And the power socket has --- over it rather than any voltage number or polarity symbol.

So I believed it. Thought it weird but believed it.

And then to make matters worse I got that garbage from the Seagate guy. It's true I never mentioned the power question to him.

Very embarrasing. Managed to find a 12v with a right sized plug and gave it a go and one of them is hooked into my linux box and working right now and of course I fully expect the other will work too when I get a plug for it.

Have a laugh at my expense and thanks for waking me up.

:)

abrogard said:

Well I'd rather not have to reveal this but the drive was not plugged in.

It's not quite as embarrassing as it sounds - or maybe it is worse. They are old drives and when I found them I didn't have power supplies for them. So I googled to try find what voltage I needed and polarity.

And what I got was gpt told me they didn't need any power at all. That model didn't use the power socket.

I could believe that. I've seen manufacturers alter product lines like that. And the power socket has --- over it rather than any voltage number or polarity symbol.

So I believed it. Thought it weird but believed it.

And then to make matters worse I got that garbage from the Seagate guy. It's true I never mentioned the power question to him.

Very embarrasing. Managed to find a 12v with a right sized plug and gave it a go and one of them is hooked into my linux box and working right now and of course I fully expect the other will work too when I get a plug for it.

Have a laugh at my expense and thanks for waking me up.

:)

Very happy you found what was wrong and now it's working.