"John" wrote in message
...
I took my external hard drive to my daughter's house to 'lift' a video and
some music of her note book PC which has Windows 7.

I assumed that I would be able to just plug into the USB port - but the
note book would identify the external drive - but wouldn't open it or even
acknowledge anything was on it.

Any ideas what was the issue - would I need to install the drivers onto
the notebook?

Does it need an external power supply? If normally powered from USB, the
notepad may not have enough poke for it to spin up and be recognised.

Sometimes you can get a dual USB cable that takes the power from two ports.