External Hard drive doesn't show up!

[Ch@n]

are u logged in as an admin and the trying to assign letters?

 

[selakos]

Same problem here. I Have an external drive "My book essential 2" and in the begining everything was ok. And suddently windows doesn't recognize the hard drive. I Can hear a sound that a device is connected but nothing more. I Went to disk managment to give a name as jimbo45 described but i can't see the hard drive at all.
In my netbook (xp) works perfectly.
What i can do? :/

 

[Ch@n]

Does ur drive gets detected in DM?

 

[selakos]

No! Not at all! When i am going to see what devices are in my usb, i can see a hard drive that not recognize but i am not sure if it's really the one hard disk that don't work or my other external disk that works.

 

[Ch@n]

right click on the not recognised drive and try updating the drivers. if doesnt work, disable and then enable it and check.

 

[selakos]

Nope, it doesn't work, i think it's the external drive that already recognizes.

 

[Ch@n]

then, can u try it in safe mode?

 

[selakos]

Everything ok! Thank you very much!

 

[Ch@n]

Mind sharing the solution that worked or the spreading the cause, which wil help fella members having ur issue.

Thnx and happy 7ing.

 

[dyboc]

Yes, that would be really appreciated, since I also cannot find my portable disk in Explorer (but it shows up as an Unspecified device), assigning a letter via Disk management doesn't work since the portable HDD does not show up. Also, rebooting in Safe mode hasn't helped.
I'm really lost and I need the data on the HDD as soon as possible :S

 

[Ch@n]

^^ buddy, welcome!

scroll thru all 3 pages and try the soultions provided. in the mean time, lets hope selakos post his solution.

Al the very best.

 

[dyboc]

Thanks for the welcome!
As I mentioned, I already tried all of the suggested solutions; Disk management doesn't show the HDD in question amd starting the system in Safe mode is also not sucessfull. I guess I'll just have to wait for the OP's revelation :/

 

[Szaki]

Same problem here. I have a WD Passport (external HDD) and my laptop running Win7 does not detect it at all.
The lamp of the HDD is on so it gets power, but there is no trace of it on the machine. Other flash drives seem to be working fine from the same USB port.

Also, when I plug the WD into my other laptop running Vista there it starts up normally.

Strange thing is, about every 60 seconds Windows 7 gives me a kind of "trumpet sound" when the WD is plugged in. I have no idea what that means, but the sound is gone when I pull the HDD out.

I've read through the thread here but no solutions worked. The device does not even show up in the Disk management panel, but I do seem to have something unrecognized connected to one of the USB ports.

I would love to use this drive on this computer as copying everything from my other machine file by file with a flash drive seems ridiculous.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Jimmcwibb]

Hi guys, I know this is an old thread but I have a solution that works for me, and rather than piss off with my working hard drive I'm going to actually post my solution. Also this thread is the top result in google.

I bought a new 3TB external USB 3.0 drive (Seagate "Expansion"). Plugged it in to a USB 2.0 port, windows saw it and installed it. It showed up in device manager under "disk drives" as "Seagate Exapansion Desk USB device", so that all seems fine. However, it didn't show up or appear in explorer.

It did appear in Computer Management (Disk management) as a new disk, in the lower pane only. But it didn't appear to have a file system, and it wasn't assigned a drive letter. This is similar to other posts in this thread. I tried to assign it a drive letter, but it just threw up an error. I tried to reformat it, and again it just threw up another error. I tried different USB ports, I tried USB 3.0 ports, with the same results.

However, it was easily fixed. All I did was uninstall the device in device manager (right click, uninstall). Then I unplugged the USB cable, reinserted the USB cable into the same port, windows found it and installed it again (this process seemed identical to the first time round) but this time it showed up in explorer straight away and has a drive letter.

So I'm guessing something went wrong with the original installation, giving windows a second chance solved the issue. Good old windows....

 

[nick4onelove]

I know this is ancient and I'm actually on Windows 8, but this thread is the first thing that pops up when I googled this problem, and I've figured it out. I tried every solution here to no avail.

What you have to do is delete every separate partition volume on the drive. This will leave one large unallocated partition volume that you can now right-click and choose New Simple Drive. This let me format it, choose a letter, and it popped up in explorer immediately after!