Solved Seagate Expansion Drive 320GB Not Showing Up In My Computer Anymore!!

[lynnemcc87]

Hey, wondering if someone can help

Bought my new external hard drive and put a load of my files onto it with no problem at all, but today, on the second time of using it, I plugged it in and it seems to be working because the green light is on and the icon to eject is there, but its not showing in My Computer.

I've seen people saying about the Disk Management and changing the name or path.... so when I open up that window, the disk is not named, when I right click on it, everything is greyed out apart from Help and Delete Volume options.

I've tried uninstalling the drive under the Device Manager and re-installing it again. but that doesn't work either.

I have tried this on my 2 laptops, PB and HP, and it is exactly the same on both. Both run windows 7 64-bit.

Hope Someone is able to help me out a bit, Thanks Lynne.

 

[lynnemcc87]

This may help....

 

[essenbe]

Lynne, I would suggest you running Seatools for Windows, Seagate's diagnostic program. The instructions are at the same link. You may also try restarting the computer with the drive attached and see what happens.

After runnung the long diagnostic test (which will take several hours depending on the size of your drive), assuming it passes, I would consider wiping the drive clean and start over partitioning. You have 2 8MB partitions that are pretty much useless. An NTFS file system has a limit of 4 primary partitions. So, if in the future you need more partitions, you will have difficulty doing it. Your 3rd partition is 102MB, which is also very small. You could delete the first 3 partitions and extend them to the left, but you would have to use partition wizard to do that. I'm just trying to give you some options. The diagnostic program is the most imporatant and perhps run chkdsk: /f /r to be sure the drive is operating properly.

 

[jumanji]

Yep, You have two 8MB and one 120 MB partitions. What for? I would think that you have messed up with partitioning the drive.

You said you had loaded some files into it the first time. Did you access those after loading? Or you partitioned (messed up ) the drive afterwards?

Assuming that what you loaded already need not be recovered, yes, run Seagate Seatools for Windows as suggested by essenbe a) SeaTools for Windows | Seagate b) SeaTools | Seagate

Considering that it is a new drive, I would think just a quick test should be sufficient and if it passes the quick test, you can straight away zero it (wipe it) again with Seatools and then format it.

For formatting I would recommend Partition Wizard Home Edition 8 Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

 

[Faladu]

I was puzzled by the 8/8/102 also.

But I'd look at Device Manager and see if it has a ! indicating any issues related to a driver for the drive.

What type of connection is that drive using?

Eliminate the more obvious stuff, like cable or connections, try other ports/cables.

 

[lynnemcc87]

Hey everyone, thanks for your replies i will try that and see what happens. I dont need to recover anything thats on it as i still have all the original files so i dont mind losing anything.

As for the small partitions, i dont know anything about that.....ive only used it once, plugged it in, made a folder called my files, and and put all of my files in it. then i checked to make sure that they were there before ejecting it. that's the only thing i've ever done with the drive.

Ill let you know if its a success or a fail haha

 

[dsperber]

I don't understand... is this a duplicate thread??

You already had posted your own addition to another similarly titled thread in this forum which I and others replied to there as well. Please stick with one thread.

Anyway, I'll re-post my reply here as well, as this is now your own thread.

==============================================================

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?

 

[lynnemcc87]

ok, I've stopped in the other thread, I had wrote in that one first because i didnt know how to make my own thread at first


Hey, ok from the begining then

I bought this brand new, opened it up, it installed right away so i was able to open it from My Computer, and it came up as expansion drive (E)....so it did have a letter to start off with. This was done on my Packard Bell laptop, windows 7 64 bit.... so then i clicked to open the drive, made a new folder in it and put all of my files...pics, videos, music etc....just so i had a backup. I then checked to make sure they had successfully copied, ejected the disk, and then removed the cable from my USB port.

That is all I done....i dont even know how to make new partitions...

So then today, the second time i was going to use it, I plugged it in (to the exact same laptop) and then it just didnt show up and i havnt changed or added anything else to the laptop in between this whole process

hope that helps....i should have been a bit more clear in the first place....

 

[DocBrown]

Hello Lynne,


When you were right clicking on a section that gave you the grayed out menus, was it the small 8, 8, or 102 partitions ?

What happens when you right click on the 297.7 partition ? Does it give you a menu that is not grayed out, that will let you assign a Driver Letter ?

 

[dsperber]

ok, I've stopped in the other thread, I had wrote in that one first because i didnt know how to make my own thread at first

Ok. Thanks. We're now all on the same one page, in the same one thread. Don't want to lose anybody's posts in case it helps someone else down the road who has a similar problem.

I bought this brand new, opened it up, it installed right away so i was able to open it from My Computer, and it came up as expansion drive (E)....so it did have a letter to start off with. This was done on my Packard Bell laptop, windows 7 64 bit.

Sounds perfect, assuming it had been factory formatted into one primary partition... probably as FAT32, but possibly as NTFS.

In either case, if it had been initialized by Seagate at the factory as one primary partition and either FAT32 or NTFS, then your results would have been exactly as expected. The drive (actually that partition) which got recognized and assigned a "drive letter" of E by Windows would have been immediately usable right out of the carton, corresponding to the results you experienced.

... so then i clicked to open the drive, made a new folder in it and put all of my files...pics, videos, music etc....just so i had a backup. I then checked to make sure they had successfully copied,

All appropriate and perfectly reasonable.

ejected the disk

Is this a real "spinner" hard drive, or a solid-state stick or other USB device? By "eject", what do you mean exactly?

By this "eject" do you mean you right-clicked on the "safely remove hardware and eject media" icon which appeared in the System Tray when you first plugged in the new drive to a USB port, got a popup menu, and then selected the "eject" item for the drive from that menu, and then received the "it is now safe to remove hardware" message?

Again, perfect technique. This MUST be done prior to unplugging the USB cable for all removable devices which get a drive letter assigned by Windows and for which "write cache" (for performance) is in effect (i.e. has not been disabled via Explorer setting in Windows for the device), in order to guarantee that all in-memory data buffers get flushed out to the device prior to its disconnection. Failure to do this can result in corrupted file systems or data.

But if this is what you did, then that one factory-initialized partition (originally written to by your laptop during that first connection) should have been just as recognizable (and given a drive letter of E again by Windows) the second time you plugged in the drive. Clearly that didn't happen, but we still don't know yet why that happened.

, and then removed the cable from my USB port.

That is all I done....i dont even know how to make new partitions...

Fair enough.

So then today, the second time i was going to use it, I plugged it in (to the exact same laptop) and then it just didnt show up and i havnt changed or added anything else to the laptop in between this whole process

hope that helps....i should have been a bit more clear in the first place....

Well, we still need to make the drive completely usable and recognizable, even if there's nothing there at this moment which is critical. It obviously needs a drive letter.

We don't know what those little 8MB partitions are, or how they got there. But if you didn't put them there then they must have come from Seagate that way.

But in my opinion, given what you've now gone through, if it were my drive and I wanted some "closure" before just formatting it and starting over, I'd use free Partition Wizard to see what's actually in that 297GB partition and whether or not it can be resurrected and brought back to life.

Partition Wizard (PW) has a "partition recovery" function that can examine "raw space" like this, which say might have occurred if you accidentally deleted a partition (assuming you know how to do that) and you now wish to recover it, hopefully mostly or entirely exactly intact. On the left side of the PW GUI there is a "partition recovery wizard" which you can use, and it will guide you through its preliminary exploration and then it will tell you what it finds and recommends. Certainly the information it presents to you would be very interesting to us here, to find out what might be going on.

Thus using PW it might be possible able to just immediately bring back that partition from wherever it has gone, and that folder with files in it that you created during your first connection to the drive could well still be perfectly 100% intact. PW could bring it all back.

Or... maybe not. But only trying PW's "partition recovery" functionality will tell us.


In worst case, if that partition truly has been lost, I'd suggest using PW to initialize the entire contents of the drive as one single NTFS partition (empty originally, of course)... and now you can be sure it WILL be usable going forward. It will most likely get drive letter E from Windows again, but we'll see.

You can use the "delete all partitions" operation of PW on the left, to instantly return ALL of the drive (including those mysterious 8MB items) back to the UNALLOCATED FREE SPACE of the drive. You have to left-click on the drive "title" on the left side of the graphical representation in the upper-pane of the PW window), to select it for this "delete all partitions" operation. The lower-pane will now change its presentation for that drive to reflect everything unallocated and available (although it has not yet taken place... until you finally push the APPLY button to perform all queued operations, of which this will be the first).

Next, select that 100% unallocated drive in the lower-pane. On the left side of the PW GUI window the operations will now appear showing you "create partition" as an option. You can select that item (or, you can right-click on the drive in the lower-pane and select "create partition" from the popup menu).

And now you can just leave all the parameters default... as they will no doubt be for creating an NTFS primary partition (which is just fine for your needs) using 100% of available space. It will pre-fill a drive letter to be assigned, which will probably be E. You can optionally enter a "label" for the drive (e.g. "Seagate") but that's not required. When you push OK this second operation of creating the partition will also be queued.

Finally, push the "APPLY" button on the left side of the toolbar at the top of the PW window, to perform both of these queued operations. And when it's complete, you should now have your partition E on the Seagate drive, all freshly formatted as NTFS and all empty. And those two 8MB areas will be gone.


That's what I'd do, if it were my drive and I'd experienced this mystery.

But again... it is MANDATORY to go through the "safely remove hardware" procedure prior to pulling the USB cable, for ANY removable device which gets a Windows drive letter and which has "write cache" (for performance) enabled.

Let us know what you do, and the outcome.

 

[lynnemcc87]

Thank you so much to everyone that has replied and tried to help me. All of your comments were took on board, as I am in no position to question anybody's computer knowledge...because mine sucks

And thank you so much dsperber for all of your help and the time you took to explain all of this to me.....im happy to say that my initial problem is fixed after following all of your instructions!!

I can now use my external hard drive again

Big Thank You to everyone!

 

[dsperber]

And thank you so much dsperber for all of your help and the time you took to explain all of this to me.....im happy to say that my initial problem is fixed after following all of your instructions!!

I can now use my external hard drive again

That screenshot looks PERFECT!! You have an E!! And I see that you did choose to label that partition "Seagate".

As it turns out you have created a "logical partition" lettered E, rather than a "primary partition". No problem, and it really doesn't matter. But if you look at the color of the bar that DISKMGMT has put over that partition in your screenshot, you'll see that it is BRIGHT BLUE instead of DARK BLUE. That is a color-coded distinction between "logical" and "primary" partitions. Note that all three partitions on your internal drive are DARK BLUE. Also, not that DISKMGMT shows "logical partition" as opposed to "primary" for the partitions on your internal drive.

To get technical, there are no practical restrictions for logical partitions other than that you can't mark them as "active" which means you can't have your machine hardware BIOS boot directly from them (say if you'd installed an operating system into one of them). But using Boot Manager to control the boot process (e.g. if you have multiple operating systems installed) and the small "system reserved" partition (which is on your primary hard drive, and IS marked as "active" as it must be in order for the BIOS to find it, and is actually where the BIOS goes to begin the boot process when you power on the machine) in fact you actually can use "logical" partitions for pretty much everything.

The real advantage to "logical" partitions over "primary" partitions is that there can be any number of them (perhaps up to 255 possibly), whereas primary partitions are limited to a maximum of four per hard drive. That's really the only reason people choose to create a logical partition in the first place, because they plan to have more than four partitions on the drive. Otherwise there would be no reason to go that way.

Just remember that all logical partitions on one hard drive are built inside of one (of the maximum of four) primary partitions on the hard drive, so that you now only have a maximum of three true primary partitions remaining which can get Windows drive letters and be used as ordinary partitions.

My own desktop PC has four internal hard drives, and each hard drive has multiple partitions. My drive letters go C-M for the partitions on my internal drives. I chose to use "logical" partitions for all non-OS partitions (i.e. for my "data"), no matter how many or how large or small, just so that I never need to worry about resizing or moving/merging them, or creating new logical partitions from free space or from restructuring of existing adjacent partitions. Everything inside of that one "extended partition" (i.e. that one primary partition used to host the one or more logical partitions inside of it, along with any "logical freespace" that may be unallocated inside of that same "extended partition") is managed together, as if it were its own independent drive that had had no limits on the number or location of partitions within it.

Note that whereas I suggested that you might label your new partition (just one, using up all available space on that external Seagate drive) "Seagate", in my situation I've had to be a little more precise since I have multiple partitions on each of my four hard drives. So to be unambiguous I've come up with a labeling scheme that is a combination of some unique distinguishing abbreviation of the drive/manufacturer/size along with the partition number on that drive. So for example, WD2000-P1, WD750-P3, HIT320-P2, etc.. These labels are completely independent of the drive letter Windows assigns to each partitions, and are simply useful additional indicative values that you make up for your own personal use. In this case I'm just trying to provide a physical identity to my own partitions, having nothing to do with the corresponding Windows drive letters which have been assigned to them.


Anyway, in your situation where you only wanted one partition on that Seagate drive, it really didn't matter which way you went... logical or primary, but putting a meaningful label ("Seagate") on it obviously makes it show up that way in DISKMGMT, Explorer, etc., and is therefore helpful.

I thought PW would have defaulted to "primary", but if you used it and didn't change the defaults then I guess I'm wrong and its default must have been "logical". Not a problem either way, as I predicted in my explanation.

Glad to have been able to help out, and impart some presumably useful information about drives and partitions that may be useful for you in the future.

 

[lynnemcc87]

Its all very confusing to me but i think i am starting to understand it all a lot better now. Im in my first year of college studying admin, IT and computing.....i hope to be as knowledgeable as you one day!

And yes i chose to name it Seagate....i'm very good at following instructions! and as I hadn't yet put any of my files on the drive yet, I just went and changed it to a Primary partition. Im getting good at this! haha.

Time to start adding files....thanks very much!!

 

[dsperber]

...and as I hadn't yet put any of my files on the drive yet, I just went and changed it to a Primary partition.

No harm, no foul. But honestly there's nothing wrong with having left that partition as "logical". You really didn't need to make it "primary". Either form is functionally 100% identical in terms of everything you need that drive for.

Just one last comment for closure on this particular subject...

Remember that I said there was a maximum of four primary partitions on a hard drive. So depending on the number of logical partitions you have defined within the "extended partition" (i.e. the particular primary partition you implicitly chose to hold your one or more logical partitions inside of it), and where those logical partitions are located within the extended partition, it may always be possible to convert any/all of your logical partitions to primary... or maybe it's possible to convert just some or at worst just one of them.

And Partition Wizard can always do this conversion for you, no matter whether or not there are files already located in the logical partition(s) you want to convert.

But the important thing to keep in mind is that you can never have more than four total primary partitions on a hard drive. And if you keep at at least one logical partition defined, then that logical partition took over one of your maximum four primary partition and converted it into an "extended partition", so that now you have a maximum of three primary partitions possible.

And the fact that you have at least one logical partition defined means you have established the "extended partition", which is the prerequisite for having one or more logical partitions inside of it. So if you have one logical partition, you really can have two or more logical partitions with no further considerations other than having sufficient space allocated to that extended partition to hold all of the logical partitions you'd like to have at the sizes you'd like to have them be.


Final comment on Partition Wizard. It can also be used to move (left or right) and/or resize partitions. Obviously what you can do depends on your existing partitions, where (if any) there is free space (either "primary" free space located to the left or right of primary partitions, or "logical" free space located to the left or right of logical partitions within the extended partition).

So generally speaking, it's only the logical partitions at the leftmost or rightmost locations within the extended partition that can be converted to primary partitions without much else to worry about (assuming you stay within the maximum of four primary partitions if you have no more logical partitions left, or a maximum of three primary partitions if you have at least one logical partition left since that means you still need the extended partition to hold the remaining logical partitions).

But anything you imagine you want to do, Partition Wizard can do that for you... or if it can't, it will tell you why in an error message. And of course nothing is actually done until you push the APPLY button at which time the entire queue of scheduled operations is now performed. At any time you can "undo" the most recently queued operation, or you can flush the entire current queue in order to start over from scratch for whatever reason.

And as you queue up an operation, the Partition Wizard graphical presentation changes to reflect that operation as if it had been applied... even though we realize it hasn't yet been applied. And of course any "undo" steps back in the graphical presentation to reflect the backout of that last queued operation.

As you've no doubt surmised, I am a BIG FAN of Partition Wizard... even when working in the simplest of situations such as yours, where you simply have a hard drive and you'd like to set it up to be just one single partition. It's pretty much impossible to make a mistake, and it's pretty much guaranteed that the graphical interface and intuitive controls will intuitively guide you through accomplishing exactly what you want.


Ok... case closed. Again, glad you're in business.