Windows not recognising External Hard drive

[XweAponX]

How odd - Do you have the Western Digital SES driver installed? It's necessary for those My Book drives. It usually installs automatically - If it doesn't, the driver is on the Drive Itself, or on the CD which comes with the drive.

 

[citylimits]

How odd - Do you have the Western Digital SES driver installed? It's necessary for those My Book drives. It usually installs automatically - If it doesn't, the driver is on the Drive Itself, or on the CD which comes with the drive.

View attachment 20808

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I don't have that in my Device Manager list, it isn't a My Book, it's a WD Elements 1TB portable Hard Drive 3.0, should it still require that file? There was no disc that came with it in the box, I assumed it was 'plug and go' do you have a link to a download for the drive management device at all?

 

[citylimits]

Update: I just plugged the drive back in to have another go at it, and it recognised it again this morning (has been doing this on and off). Whilst it was working, In the drive properties under 'volume' there was a new option called 'populate', which I clicked and it is now showing up as pictured here, so it's not saying it's uninitialised anymore... does this mean it's fixed? Do I still need to try to partition it or is that what just happened?

Don't want to transfer my 650GB back over until I know it's good to go!

 

[citylimits]

Update: still no further options available in Partition Wizard program.

 

[citylimits]

It's still saying the drive is write protected, any ideas on fixing that also?

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Try this from within Windows.
1) Delete the partition.
2) Re format the disk / Create simple volume.
3) check a disk letter has been assigned --if it hasn't assign it one.
4) copy ONE or TWO small files to it - doesn't matter what they are.
5) exit windows explorer
6) unmount / eject the drive via the safely remove hardware icon - the arrow on the bottom taskbar at the right.
7) unplug the device - and leave it unplugged.
8) power off the machine completely -- i.e SWITCH OFF - don't plug in the disk again yet.
9) re-boot.
10) plug in the HDD again -- if the computer sees it and you can see your data (the two files you copied in 4) above then it's all fixed.

If you get other problems please post a screen shot of the disks.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[citylimits]

Hi Jimbo,

Thanks for your reply. Is there another way to delete the partition rather than right clicking on it? When I do that it's not giving me the 'delete volume' option. See picture.

 

[citylimits]

bump

 

[topgundcp]

Do you have another PC that you can plug in your HD to test with, maybe from a friend who owns a Desktop PC ? The reason I ask because your portable HD is getting power from the USB port and with laptop, sometimes it does not provide enough power. Another possibility is your USB cable is flaky.

Maybe it's time to use diskpart from the elevated command prompt. It is a little tedious to use but it does give you commands that are unavailable with Disk Management. This link will show you a list of command options and parameters on how to use Diskpart.
DiskPart - Partition a disk | SS64.com

If you have problem using Diskpart, please post back with your question.

Good luck.

 

[alphanumeric]

You might want to have a go with diskpart. I've had good luck recovering stubborn drives by doing this. Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command - Windows 7 Help Forums

EDIT: @topgundcp, missed your post somehow and didn't see that you already suggested diskpart.

 

[Brooklyn567]

were you able to get your problem resolved?

 

[Brooklyn567]

Whatever you need to do try it from safemode with networking.