Hard drive installed, shows in Drive Mngmnt, in Bios, but not in Comp.

Dumhed · 02 Jul 2014

I have a backup drive that we had used for for a while (WD 6000aak), previously in an external drive enclosure. I connected it today via USB to find that the computer has the driver installed, the drive appears in the Devices list, but it does not show in My Computer. In "Disk Management" the drive appears but is not assigned a drive letter. Also, all the options for the volumes are greyed out and cannot be selected - thus I cannot assign a drive letter.

I have tried this on multiple computers. I have also removed it from the enclosure and connected the drive via SATA... the result is identical. I checked the bios and the drive appears there.

The drive does spin when powering up. It is hot (even though it cannot really be accessed).

Any suggestions? Is this drive done?

essenbe · 02 Jul 2014

Go to Disk Management, in the bottom part of the screen, right click the drive, select 'change drive letter or path', next window select add, next window select a drive letter from the drop down box. For an external drive it's best to use a letter lower in the alphabet. If disk management wants to initialize and format it, don't do it if there is data on it you don't want to lose. If no data or if you don't care, go ahead. It will show in computer when a drive letter is assigned.

Britton30 · 03 Jul 2014

Try option 3 here: Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows

If that won't work, try Option2. As essenbe said with a drive letter it will show in Computer. You should be able to copy data from it or format it.

jumanji · 03 Jul 2014

Please post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management.

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

Please make sure that you hide the Console tree and Action pane by clicking on the relevant icons in the tool bar so that we get a full screen view without hiding the Disk list, Disk map info.

Also tell us whether it is now connected internally or it is back as an external drive.

Remove all other external drives/pen drives/ Card Readers to avoid confusion in identifying the faulty drive.

Dumhed · 03 Jul 2014

Sorry if I was not clear. The option to assign a drive letter grayed out - cannot be selected. Attached are screenshots.

Currently, the drive is back in the external enclosure connected via USB. The issue is identical when attached "internally" to my desktop. Also, there are no other drives, virtual or physical attached. I have also tested other USB drives, hard drives, and they have no problem.

Dumhed · 03 Jul 2014

I should add, I have also cleared the mounted drives via registry and reset... but still no dice.

Anshad Edavana · 03 Jul 2014

The disk appears to be in GPT partition style but Windows doesn't seems to detect the file system. I suspect the disk was partitioned and used under "Mac OS". If that is the case, file system will be HFS+ which is not support by Windows. If there is no important data on it, simply delete both 595 GB and 200 MB partitions and then create a single NTFS volume.

jumanji · 03 Jul 2014

Anshad , Should there be any doubt that it is a Mac formatted drive???

To the OP: Can you tell us the previous history of the drive? Just for our information.

And yes, you should tell us whether you need the data in it.

Britton30 · 03 Jul 2014

Britton30 said:

Try option 3 here: Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows

If that won't work, try Option2. As essenbe said with a drive letter it will show in Computer. You should be able to copy data from it or format it.

Did you read this tutorial at all?

essenbe · 03 Jul 2014

Dumhed, try the above suggestions, if none of them work open an elevated command prompt (click start, in the search box type cmd right click the cmd that appears and select run as administrator) in the cmd window type diskpart press enter, when the window replies diskpart, type list disk, press enter, it will list each disk and assign them a number. (pick the number of the disk in question, it should be disk #2.) type select disk 2 and press enter, next type detail disk and press enter. Please post a screenshot of the command window.