My Hard Drive no longer shows up in My Computer

I have a Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive (External).
I use it 99.9% of the time on my Windows 7 64bit computer to store pictures/videos and backup important files.

It was working fine until I plugged it into a MACINTRASH to backup files from that computer.
It was a simple copy and paste from the MACINTRASH to the External HDD.

After copying the files from the MACINTRASH, I plugged it back into my PC.

My PC no longer recognizes my external HDD. I unplugged the power, plugged it back in. Same with the USB cable. Rebooted. Then my computer wouldn't reboot and windows did its automatic self repair. Nothing.

I unplugged EVERYTHING and left it that way for about 30 minutes. I plugged EVERYTHING back to my computer and turned it on.

Windows booted up fine. I plugged in the external HDD and windows had that little icon telling me it was installing drivers. I was excited to think that it finally would recognize my external HDD.

Of course, it didn't work. The HDD does not show up in my computer. It does show up in Device Manager and Disk Management.

Device Manger

• Under Disk Drives it lists it only as "WD"
• My other drives it has a nice long name like "WD 7500AAK External USB Device"
• Under properties it tells me Volume information for the disk cannot be found. (The very first time I did that prior to the reboot it said there was 0MB of space on it).
• It claims the device is working properly

Disk Management

• At first this said that I must initialize my disk.
• Now it doesn't even show up anymore.

I have no idea what to do anymore. I've had this HDD long enough that I'm sure it is no longer under warranty. I've lost so many files. Please help if you can.

This got mine back on track last night from trichard13

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...d-beda4bab2671

@Maccman, Can you please list out what exactly you did. It is a long thread and many solutions are suggested - some destructive leading to data loss.

If you specify the specific post that resolved your issue that may help others.

I think the Macintrash, er, Macintosh damaged the MBR and partition table on this disk. What I would do is look at this as a case requiring partition recovery (i.e. rebuilding the partition table).

Your best bet is the bootable CD version of Partition Wizard, which can be downloaded free and burned to a CD to boot from.

jumanji said:

@Maccman, Can you please list out what exactly you did. It is a long thread and many solutions are suggested - some destructive leading to data loss.

If you specify the specific post that resolved your issue that may help others.

Click to expand...

Hello trichard13,

Thank you for visiting the Microsoft Answers Community.

Try using diskpart to assign a drive letter to Disk #0, Partition #1.
· Click Start Orb > type diskpart
· Right-click diskpart in results above > click Run as administrator
· Once diskpart loads type list volume, press enter
You should notice that you will see your partition that you use for your data, it should not show a drive letter assigned to it.
· Type select volume 6(replace 6 with the volume number assigned to the partition in question)
· Type assign letter Z (replace Z with the letter that you want to assign to it)
When you look in Computer, you should be able to see your partition.

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/201051-external-hard-drives-not-showing-up.html

Thank you all for your replies.

I will try both suggestions when I get home and let you know if any of them worked, or if I could use more help.

Maccman said:

jumanji said:

@Maccman, Can you please list out what exactly you did. It is a long thread and many solutions are suggested - some destructive leading to data loss.

If you specify the specific post that resolved your issue that may help others.

Click to expand...

Hello trichard13,

Thank you for visiting the Microsoft Answers Community.

Try using diskpart to assign a drive letter to Disk #0, Partition #1.
· Click Start Orb > type diskpart
· Right-click diskpart in results above > click Run as administrator
· Once diskpart loads type list volume, press enter
You should notice that you will see your partition that you use for your data, it should not show a drive letter assigned to it.
· Type select volume 6(replace 6 with the volume number assigned to the partition in question)
· Type assign letter Z (replace Z with the letter that you want to assign to it)
When you look in Computer, you should be able to see your partition.

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/201051-external-hard-drives-not-showing-up.html

Click to expand...

My hard drive doesn't show up in that list.
After my computer boots up the hard drive isn't spinning, but the light is on.

It's not spinning? Then something is sending the harddrive to sleep, apparently.

You could simply turn it off and back on to get it to spin up again - then see if it's picked up by the system or by the diskpart commands.

Corazon said:

It's not spinning? Then something is sending the harddrive to sleep, apparently.

You could simply turn it off and back on to get it to spin up again - then see if it's picked up by the system or by the diskpart commands.

Click to expand...

Nope

Does your Mac use HFS+? Windows is NTFS or FAT. Writing to a NTFS disk with a Mac will destroy the file system unless you're using a plug-in on the Mac or writing to separate partitions. And I think you have to partition the drive on the Mac first, then Windows skipping the Mac partition area.

Ok, here you go. Found this: How to Share an External Hard Drive Between a Mac and a PC - The macosxhints Forums

carwiz said:

Does your Mac use HFS+? Windows is NTFS or FAT. Writing to a NTFS disk with a Mac will destroy the file system unless you're using a plug-in on the Mac or writing to separate partitions. And I think you have to partition the drive on the Mac first, then Windows skipping the Mac partition area.

Click to expand...

I have no idea what the mac uses. It's a Macbook Pro which had Snow Leopard.

My mac was able to view all the files on my HDD prior to and after copying. So I am having a hard time understanding why the hard drive was destroyed after it was finished copying.

Okay, I took the hard drive out of the casing/box.

I plugged it directly to my desktop's eSATA.

it shows up in Device Manager fine.

In Computer Management's Disk Management, it tells me I have to initialize the disk before I can access it.

BUT WHY WHEN IT WAS WORKING FINE BEFORE!?!?

*sigh*

Was the file system on the external drive FAT32 or NTFS? How many partitions were there?

You can recover the partitions using the free Easeus Partition Recovery Software. This site also has tutorials on recovering the deleted partitions.

After you recover the partition, it is better to copy recoverable files off the hard disk to another hard disk (internal or external).

Once the files are transferred to another hard disk, remove all partitions from this hard disk, and freshly create new partitions and format to NTFS file system before you use it again.

I honestly don't remember if it was FAT32 or NTFS. My drive only had one partition. Thanks for the link. I hope it works because all the other partition recovery software I've used can't even detect the drive. When I get back home for the holidays I will hopefully come back with good results. Thanks.

Well, before you try any Partition Recovery software, check to see whether you can access the drive and copy the files with another OS - and what else other than Linux.

My thread http://www.sevenforums.com/software...-files-non-bootable-computer.html#post1669991 should help you doing that. ( Though it was written to recover files from an internal drive, you can use it to recover files from an external drive too, if the Linux sees it)

Try.

I've transformed my external drive into an internal drive. I took it out of the box and plugged it directly to the eSATA of my computer. I did this with the assumption that Western Digital's USB interface was the one that crapped out.

Only thing that my computer does is detects my HDD in Device Manager. In Disk Management it tells me the HDD needs to be initiated. Windows Explorer it doesn't show up of course.

I know that with the USB it didn't show up in MAC anymore either. So I guess I'll download LINUX and see what that does. Thanks for your help. I will check out your thread.

Yep, try it.

In my write up. it was recovering files from an inaccessible C drive to an external drive.

In your case you will be trying to read from an inaccessible external drive to your C drive (if enough space is there in it) or to another external drive.

All this if Lucid puppy can mount and read the problem drive. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

If not successful, you may have to revert to conventional recovery options.