500GB hardrive not showing up

[timotb]

I have an external USB Western Digital 500GB hdd that will not show up and read on this windows 7 home premium 64 bit generic machine. Reads just fine on another windows seven machine.

On this generic machine, light comes on the hdd indicating good power and the windows music jingle plays after a few seconds suggesting it acknowledged the new hardware. No show under computer drives or in disk management.

 

[gregrocker]

Is it possible it's there in Disk Mgmt but just not assigned a letter? Scroll down to see if there are any unlettered drives, right click to issue it a letter and it will show up in Computer.

If not then is it detected in BIOS setup?

 

[timotb]

Definitely not hiding under disk management. Went to Bios setup and it appears to be seen. USB harddrive WD500 GB

 

[gregrocker]

Type CMD in Start button Search box, rightclick result to Run as Admin, type:

DISKPART
List Disk
Sel disk # (replace # with the drive's disk number shown)
Assign
Exit

 

[CKWD]

Hello timotb!

Is this drive an external or internal? Is it yours and was it first set up on that windows 7 home premium system? If it shows somewhere else, on other systems and in that system's BIOS, then the problem is in that certain computer and its OS.
This may be an ownership problem. You could use the built-in Diskpart tool and check the status of that drive.
Do you have the latest drivers for your hard disks (SATA/RAID controller)?

CK_WD

 

[timotb]

Type CMD in Start button Search box, rightclick result to Run as Admin, type:

DISKPART
List Disk
Sel disk # (replace # with the drive's disk number shown)
Assign
Exit

DISKPART> list disk

Disk 0 online 465GB 0B (internal HDD also is 500GB)
Disk 1 no media 0 0

DISKPART> sel disk 1

disk 1 is now the selected disk

DISKPART> assign

there is no volume specified.
please select a volume and try again

 

[timotb]

Hello timotb!

Is this drive an external or internal? Is it yours and was it first set up on that windows 7 home premium system? If it shows somewhere else, on other systems and in that system's BIOS, then the problem is in that certain computer and its OS.
This may be an ownership problem. You could use the built-in Diskpart tool and check the status of that drive.
Do you have the latest drivers for your hard disks (SATA/RAID controller)?

CK_WD

External USB plug and play
I own the HDD.....I think I originally formatted the disk on another computer
checking now for latest drivers.

 

[timotb]

on further investigation, it appears there are no drivers installed for this WD5000ME passport hdd.....I have to find some.

 

[gregrocker]

What is listed in Device Manager for the drive?

There should be no need for any HD drivers to be supplied for Win7.

Do you have all Important and Optional Windows Updates installed, after enabling Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3)?

Check Automatically for driver then in Device Manager.

 

[timotb]

found the button to update driver.....simple but hidden...fixed

 

[gregrocker]

If the driver was found using that button it came from Windows Updates, so be sure you've enabled Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) and keep all Important and Optional Updates current.

I believe a Windows Update changed that setting to enabled, another reason all Updates need to be installed since many contain patches that make the OS and your specific hardware run better.

It is still a concern why an external HD would not auto-load the driver - unless that setting was off.

 

[CKWD]

If you managed to update the drive and its drivers and everything's fixed, I'm glad to hear it!
Don't forget to back up your files in case that if it happens again, you won't be worried about any data you'd have on the drive.

Good luck!

CK_WD