Parallels can't see external HD in XP

When running XP, "My Computer" does not see the external HD. The Mac sees it just fine. Also My Computer also reports seeing a 3.5" floppy that does not exist. Any ideas anyone? This is in version 3.0.

Is your external HD connected through firewire? If so, Parallels computers can't connect to it.

Parallels creates a virtual floppy disk, in the parallels folder its a .fdd file. I still haven't figured out how to make use of it yet, so I'm not really sure of it's purpose.

The external drive is connected via USB 2.0

both OS's can't use the drive at the same time (this policy helps prevent file corruption). You need to connect to the drive from within XP. I haven't used Parallels...in Fusion, you click a USB symbol to connect external drives, the iSight, and so on.

Yes, you probably need to connect it under the Devices Menu.

It has to be formatted as FAT32 or NTFS, I think.