Windows 7: Iomega portable hard drive not recognised

Hello there, I have an Iomega portable hard drive, which is compatible with windows 7, however, when running the Iomega Encryption Utility using the reconfiguration option to set a password for the hard drive, it told me you must format this drive before use, anyways, my windows 7 doesnt recognise it anywhere! yet before the encryption ran it did! in disk management it only shows my C drive, the Iomega showed up in my computer as a G drive but it doesnt now. Its like the computer cant see the hard drive! I wondered if anyone had any ideas out there or come across the problem before? I read about formatting the disk but it wont give me that option when the device is plugged in.

Does it show up in disc management?

Hi pooch, no it doesnt show in disk management or in my computer. It seemed to happen after I ran the encryption utility from Iomega, it did say afterwards I need to format the disk before use, but how can I do anything when it wont show up as a drive? LOL.

Hi, I had a similar problem wit an iomega drive, Windows 7 didnt want to know about it no matter what i did. Dont ask why but I hooked it up to a xp pc and it saw it. I reformatted it on the xp pc machine, and voila Windows 7 said hello to it. It now works fine on win 7.

Hi maybe you need to check is drive format is in fat32, is it you need to reformat it in ntfs system.

Thanks, but Im not sure how I can reformat it when win 7 wont recognise the drive, nor my vista computer....

Is this a USB device? if so does it show in Device Manager? (under disc drives)


The Idea from ripperrita is good, alternatively if you don't want to install XP you could try a linux sytem where you boot it from CD such as Ubuntu with a good internet connection you can download it and burn to CD in just over an hour.
Another Idea is Gparted Live: GParted -- About which is a partition editor that you can boot from CD

Eventually if all else fails you could try taking the HDD out of its case and plug it in directly, Not the best idea as it is easy to break the case


One question what is the point of encrypting a disk only to format it?? surely this would erase the encryption, or do I see this wrong

Yes, this is a USB device, I ran the encryption utility and the HD seems to have lost its file system somehow and isnt recognised on any machine. The HD doesnt show under my computer or disk management.

Have you tried the suggestions?

Just looking at Gparted.... how does that work?