New Seagate Expansion External Drive not showing up in 'My Computer'

External disk set up as GPT rather than MBR? Do you know why?

Do you know why it has the EFI system partition?

Have you tried running Seatools on it?

Can you post a screenshot of the results from a partition details rather than a volume details?

G'day,
I have a brand new 2TB Seagate External Desk Drive. it only worked once before it stopped appearing (less than 5 mins). I was having the same issues as above (not accessible on my computer, can't change driver letter because view not up to date ect.). Mine works on my laptop but not on my desktop both are Win 7 home prem 64 i seem to have found a solution to my issue by uninstalling and re-installing it.

Start -> Control Panel -> Hardware And Sound -> click Device Manager under devices and printers -> expand Disk Drives -> right click on hard drive and select properties -> select Driver tab -> Uninstall. after i uninstalled it i removed the usb and reinserted it i let it re-install itself and from there it seemed to work fine although i have noticed that my anti-virus was blocking setup.exe but other than that it works after i reinsert it into other USB ports and after restarting the computer.

Hope this helps I've sent 3 days of pain and a useless phone call to the manufacturer.
Cheers,
Ben

Thanks very much for your advice, but when i right click on any of the partitions, everything is grayed out apart from the 'delete volumes' and 'help'.....

This may help....

lynnemcc87 said:

I bought my new Seagate expansion drive last week and put a lot of my files in it to back them up.

There must be more to this story that you haven't told us yet.

This was a brand new 300GB(?) that you bought last week??

What computer did you initially connect it to that you apparently were able to then "put a lot of my files in it" successfully? Same laptop as you used today when these new problems began, or some other computer? Was it a Windows PC that you used, or a MAC?

Did you create a partition on the drive first, including giving it a drive letter? If so, how did you do this? Exactly what steps did you take from opening the carton on your new drive until you were then able to use it and started copying files to it? Without doing something first don't know how you could possibly have copied anything to any brand new drive, and exactly what you did at that time is crucial to our understanding how the drive might have reached the state now shown in your screenshots.

Ive seen some people talking about the Disc Management ad changing letters, but I don't know how to do this, because when I right click on the disk, it does not allow me to click on the 'change drive letters and paths....'

Well, the 8MB areas (which are not actually lettered partitions) often is the size associated with creating a "logical" partition on a brand new drive.

A "logical" partition (one or more of them, each of which get their own drive letter assigned by Windows) is created by DISKMGMT inside of one "primary" partition on the drive. Whichever primary partition you decide to use for this purpose is then separated out for this special use of holding one or more "logical" partitions inside of it and is given a name of "extended partition", just so that we can talk about it properly.

There are a maximum of four primary partitions allowed to be created on a drive (each of which gets its own drive letter assigned by Windows), any one of which can be used for the purpose of becoming an "extended partition" inside of which one or more "logical" partitions can be sub-defined. But when the first logical partition is defined, the conversion of the associated host primary partition into its nature as the "extended partition" on the drive is typically associated with an 8MB "overhead". This 8MB area is used to keep track of the size/location of the one or more logical partitions and any other free space that is contained inside of the "extended partition".

So... the number 8MB isn't entirely a random number to me. It suggests you might have done some partitioning to your brand new drive first... perhaps involving creating logical partitions rather than primary partitions, not realizing that there was a true difference in terms of how many of each you are allowed. But these 8MB areas would never get their own drive letter under any circumstances. Only the logical partitions inside the extended partition would get a drive letter, in any event.


Anyway, your 297GB partition would have been given a drive letter by your laptop's Windows if it had a file system on it that was either FAT32 or NTFS or something recognizable by Windows. The fact that it didn't automatically get a drive letter tells me it has no Windows-recognizable file system on it, at least not at the moment.

So... please fill in the missing details about the early history of this drive, and how you first used it when taking it out of its carton. What did you do to make us of it, and was that with Windows or MAC?

Sorry, ill reply in the other thread.....no more on this one

essenbe said:

Try right clicking on computer in the start menu, and select manage. In the window that opens after giving admin approval, selece disk management in the left column. It should show every hard drive connected to your computer. In the lower portion of the window, look for your Seagate, right click it and select change drive letter or path, in the next window click add and choosed a drive letter. Click OK. after the drive letter is assigned, you will be able to see the drive in explorer.

From the Master the Apprentice learns, thanks essenbe.