Problem mounting partition on USB external hard drive

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Hi folks,

From searching the forum I've found a few threads describing a similar problem, but no solutions that work for my case.

I have a USB hard drive which has two partitions:
1 x 100GB partition formatted as FAT32
1 x 900GB partition formatted as NTFS

(these sizes aren't perfectly correct, but it's a 1TB drive that's split in 1:9 proportions)

On my Windows 7 laptop, both partitions are visible in My Computer, and I can read/write with no problems. (On the same laptop, an Ubuntu install can also see and use them perfectly)

On my new Windows 8 laptop, the 100GB FAT32 patition appears under My Computer normally, but the 900GB NTFS partition does not. If I go to Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management, I can see the partition. It has no drive letter or file system listed, reports as "healthy, primary partition" and shows 100% free space. If I right click on the drive's entry in the list, my only options are "delete partition" and "help"; everything else is greyed out.

So, to summarise:
One hard drive with two partitions. Both partitions work perfectly in Win 7 and Ubuntu. Win 8 can only see the FAT32 partition, and treats the NTFS partition as if it is junk.

Can anyone suggest a way to persuade Win8 to mount this partition? I know that the drive and partition are fine, but for some reason Win8 isn't interested.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8
Is that 900GB drive blank? or does it have data on it?

If its blan,k delete the partition and recreate it under windows 8.

Is that drive in a dock or enclosure? How old is it?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 & Windows 7 Dual Boot
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP G60
    CPU
    AMD Turion RM-70 Dual Core 2.0 GHZ
    Memory
    3 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 8200M G
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Mouse
    MS Intellipoint 5 button (love it!)
    Browser
    Chrome and Chromium
    Antivirus
    Avast Free & Malwarebytes
Hi Brookklyn567,

Unfortunately the troublesome partition has about 300GB data on it.

The hard drive in question is in an enclosure, that connects by USB 2. It gets power from an external power supply. The product page is here. I've had it for about 3 years.

The obvious way around this would be to copy this data into another spare hard drive so I can format the problem partition, but the only hard drive I have that's big enough is in the Win 8 laptop. I suppose I *could* do: (1) connect the external HD to the Win7 laptop, (2) use the Win7 machine to send all the partition's data over the network to the Win 8 machine, (3) format the external HD using the Win 8 machine (4) copy all the data back to the external HD over USB. ...but as well as not actually knowing how to do that, it sounds like moving several hundred GB around in this fashion would take *ages*. It's also quite unsatisfying: Win 7, Ubuntu and a Mac can all use the partition flawlessly so there shouldn't be a need to go through all that trouble to reformat. The problem is with Win 8, not with the partition.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win 8
The important thing here is to keep your data safe...

The link you provided unfortunately is generic and does not show your drive size or model.

Can you send the model number, and did the enclosure include the HD or did you put it in?

Before anything if your computer ever asks you to format, initialize or repair your external HD tell it NO.. You dont want to change its structure..

Lets start with the drivers, it appears that lacie handles the harddrive in its own special way so lets give windows the proper drivers to deal with it

Lacie USB 2 Driver Driver for Windows 9X/ME/NT/2K/XP/2003/Vista/XP X64/2008 Free Download

these are the USB 2.0 drivers for LaCie ext drives.. The Ext drive must be disconnected when installing the drivers.

You may need to reboot, after rebooting then connect your ext hdd, and tell me what we get if anything..
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 & Windows 7 Dual Boot
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP G60
    CPU
    AMD Turion RM-70 Dual Core 2.0 GHZ
    Memory
    3 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce 8200M G
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Mouse
    MS Intellipoint 5 button (love it!)
    Browser
    Chrome and Chromium
    Antivirus
    Avast Free & Malwarebytes
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