Hard Disk is not showing in Windows

Hello Everyone,

I have this 500GB hard disk which had a few games on it and it was working fine at first but then it became too slow. I tried to format the disk but it won't let me format it. And then the disk just vanished from the My PC. It shows in the Devices and Printers and in the Disk Management and also in the Minitool Partition Wizard Free. The screenshots below show the details. Please if anyone could help me it is urgent. I do not need the data I just need the disk working. So any method would do.

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Thank you everyone for your time.

Hello hsshah!

Which is the make and model of the drive?

You could change the cable and try reformatting the drive through diskpart:

1. Open the Start Menu, type diskpart, press Enter
2. Type list disk, press Enter
3. Type select disk X (where X is the number the certain drive), press Enter
4. Type clean, press Enter
5. Type create partition primary, press Enter
6. Type format quick fs=ntfs, press Enter
7. Type assign letter=X (X=the letter you'd choose and is not in use), press Enter
8. Type exit, press Enter

These steps should erase all data, file system and partitions from the drive, create it as one entire partition with a new file system of NTFS and a letter of your choosing.

Hope it helps! :)

CK_WD

Use this tutorial for posting screen shots on this forum so we will all can take a look.

By Brink:

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The error he has received is “DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected. See the System Event Log for more information.“.

Hsshah, I would suggest you running the diskpart again but this time run “attributes disk clear readonly” before typing in “clean”.

CK_WD

I can't see anywhere where you have typed “attributes disk clear readonly”. You should've typed it before typing “clean”. I see a list of commands, meaning you've made a mistake somewhere, thus it appears.

The steps should be:

1. Open the Start Menu, type diskpart, press Enter
2. Type list disk, press Enter
3. Type select disk X (where X is the number the certain drive), press Enter
4. Type attributes disk clear readonly
5. Type clean, press Enter
6. Type create partition primary, press Enter
7. Type format quick fs=ntfs, press Enter
8. Type assign letter=X (X=the letter you'd choose and is not in use), press Enter
9. Type exit, press Enter

Read carefully through what diskpart responds, if there's an error, post it here. Make sure you are typing what I've written!

This should work, I've just tried it on a 2TB WD drive and the commands are genuine.

Still, change the cable with a new one and use USB 3.0 before typing the commands.

Best of luck! :)

CK_WD