External HD not recognized

Just bought myself a WD Elements 640GB external drive.

Just took it out of the box it came in, plugged it in, and Win 7 doesn't recognize it. It doesn't show up in Disk Management, or as an available device to boot from. I've updated my chipset drivers as I've seen that fix the problem for others, but that didn't work. I've tried it in every USB port I have, to no avail. I've left it plugged in while rebooting, I've left my computer turned off for a couple hours and then tried, but nothing seems to work.

The drive is not dead, as when I plug it in, I can feel the disk spinning up when I hold it. The light that I assume should come on to signify it is working, does not.

So, any help/suggestions/sacrificial goats to make it work would be most helpful, as I'd rather not RMA it only to find the next one has the same problem.

Dinesh said:

Can you try the HD on another PC to see if its working? It will at least give you an idea if the drive is OK or not.

I was in the process of doing that just as you posted. :)

Contrary to the smiley, I have the same problem on my laptop, which runs XP 32/Linux Mint. In XP I get the USB device not recognized message. Also not there in Disk Management. In Mint, it doesn't recognize that a USB device was even plugged in, which is very weird.

Just wrapped it back up in the box it came in, going to send it off back to Newegg tomorrow morning.

Thanks for the help anyways, folks. Hopefully I won't have to ask about the next one I get.