Haven't had this issue before, it's a WD Passport 1TB HDD.
Usually these things plug right in & show up under my computer.
But even after several unplugs, trying to update the drivers (which were already up to date) and restarting the computer, my external HDD is still not showing up under my computer?
Plug it into another 2.0 usb port and see if it works. You could also put something else in that port and see if it works.
Look in device manager Universal Serial Port and see if you have a problem.
Still nothing. No errors in device manager either.
Just for the record, this HDD has truecrypt installed on it, but the HDD should still be showing up under my computer with the true crypt file.
In addition to the excellent advice from Layback Bear you could also open Disk Management and post a maximized screenshot here. Make sure the WD is recognized and has a drive letter assigned.
How To Access Disk Management in Windows 7
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...ndows-7-a.html
Hmm, so it's showing up under Disk Management, but it says that it's RAW & when I try to assign a letter to the drive it wants to format it - which I do not want to do since there is already data on this HDD & not sure why it isn't showing up properly?
I don't know why the WD changed from NTFS to RAW. I know that some viruses can do that to a drive. Since you don't want to format and lose the data on this drive, the only other thing I can suggest is to use some kind of file recovery software, save the recovered data to another hard drive, then go ahead and do the format and assign a new drive letter to the WD. EaseUS is one company that offers data recovey software. The free version will recover up to 1 GB while the paid version has unlimited data recovery. Perhaps other Forum mebers will jump in with other suggestions.
Recover files from RAW external hard drive with data recovery software
How can I get Windows 7 to read RAW hard drives without having to - Microsoft Community
Well that really doesn't make sense because this HDD has been locked away in a safe far from viruses since the last time it was plugged in, loaded with Truecrypt & backed up my entire computer.
It's virtually impossible for it to have a virus.
There is no other way to fix this?
Luckily my main computer HDD hasn't crashed & I'm not relying on this backup at this time, I was just trying to update it. But if I was relying on my back up and this happened... after all of the precautions I took I would burn something down.
No only 1 computer at my disposal sadly...
RAW generally indicates it's been removed prematurely at least once or twice from the PC...
I'm afraid it should be data recovery apps you should be researching...
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