Windows 7 - External Hard Drive Showing Blank When Full

I own two Western Digital hard drives which I store all my important data on. One is a WD MyBook 1TB and the other is a WD Passport 500gb. I use these drives in conjunction with a WDTV Live unit to watch and listen to my media.

I keep having errors with Windows 7 and the permissions and recognization of these two drives. I thought I had figured this out before but forgot how to fix it and I am asking for help.

My 1tb drive shows as a BLANK drive and I know that it is full. It shows as an active drive in disk management and I've renamed it to different drive letter. It is recognizing the drive but not the data on the drive.

I believe I read before that it has something to do with windows 7 and the WDTV live changing the permissions and remapping the drive.

I spent the last few hours trying to figure this out. HOping someone on here could help me out.

Windows Explorer (in the Computer section) shows that the drive is empty (i.e. 1 TB is available for files)?

The Drive itself is named Blank (B, and it happens to have nothing on it but WD Smartware.

Try this:

• Right click on the drive.
• Select "Properties".
• Go to the "Security" tab.
• Check that "Users" (or your user account) has "List folder contents" selected.

Another possibility is that they have been marked as "Hidden".

Try this:

• Open the "Start Menu"
• Type "folder" in the search box.
• Choose "Show hidden files and folders" from the list (if it appears).
• Check that "Show hidden files, folders and drives" is selected.
• You could also turn off "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)".

If it is an empty or non OS drive, it should not be Active.

I have a 1TB and 2TB Western Digital My Book USB drives along with WDTV box for playing the media on a TV. I also use Windows 7 and I have never faced any problems you have just described.

These drives require SES drivers for correct functioning. Do you have SES driver installed on your Window 7? (check in Device Manager). If not you will find these drivers on the WD Smartware software.

I am enclosing my drives permissions and ownership details. You may compare these permissons with your HDDs and if necessary correct them.

WDTV does not change the NTFS file permissions on the HDD. It only creates a database index of media you have on the HDD. You will find the database entries in .wd_tv folder.

I appreciate all the suggestions guys but its not working. Here is the funny thing the light on the front of the drive which shows capacity is showing that drive is full. But Windows Explorer shows the drive is empty. Can't seem to figure this out. Drive is no longer active.