Unable to initialize the external drive in Windows 7

[hechesspee]

Hi,
I have an WD Elements 1023 external hard drive which I want to connect to my laptop which runs a 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium. When I connect the device, it shows up in the device manager and the driver is installed properly.

However, it doesnt show up as a drive and in the Disk Management, it shows as Disk1 unknown. When I try to Initialize the disk, I get a error that the "The Media is write protected".

Its been a real pain as I have a lot of data init and unable to access it.
It wud be great if anybody could suggest me a solution for this.

Thanks in advance!
Harsha

 

[Arc]

Welcome aboard.

If you restart with the laptop with the external drive connected, it may recognize the drive.

 

[hechesspee]

I tried it restarting....but it hasnt worked....

 

[Bertison]

Can you remove the ext. Hard drive from the case?

This may sound incorrect, but it worked for me with the same issue: switch off laptop and ext drive and completely unplug everything from the Ext case, remove drive from the case, reassemble the ext hard drive and plug all components back in before restarting the laptop and ext drive. I have no idea why this worked for me but I hope it works for you too.

 

[Britton30]

Does the drive work in another computer ok?

 

[jumanji]

Can you put out a screenshot of how it appears in Disk Management?

Where was it being used before?

 

[hechesspee]

Hi all,
Thanks for your responses.

So far I have tried restarting the computer with the external HDD connected, but still it is not getting detected. The same HDD was working fine a couple of days back....suddenly its stopped working and its driving me crazy because all my data is init!


Screen shot of how the drive appears in the device manager
https://picasaweb.google.com/114564433723979804644/March3201202#5715608574510479554

Screen shot of how the drive appears in the disk manager
https://picasaweb.google.com/114564433723979804644/March32012#5715607129219976018

 

[hechesspee]

Hi,
I checked the diskpart from the command prompt and the disk is listed.

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 931 GB

So does this mean that the external HDD is not physically damaged?

Regards
hechesspee

 

[Britton30]

Try posting your Disk Management like this http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html#post93869 both your link are dead for me.
From what you posted it appears Windows is saying all 931GB space is free.

 

[hechesspee]

Hi,
Please find the screen shots from device manager and disk manager.

Regards
Harsha

 

[Britton30]

Does the drive work in another computer ok?

What about this?
What OS did you use to add data to the drive?

 

[jumanji]

Have you installed WD's Smartware?

If you have it on your PC, open it and somwhere you may have to unlock it.

( That's what I read in another forum. I am just acting as a Post-office. )

 

[hechesspee]

hi,
WD Smartware didnt help much as its not able to detect the drive.
This HDD was working until a couple of days back in the same laptop that I'm using now!

I tried it in another laptop with Windows 7, but its not working there too..

Regards
Harsha

 

[Britton30]

I may be wrong, but it would appear you or someone did something in the last two days that "broke" the drive.

 

[jumanji]

Would I tend to agree with Britton30? Not yet but may eventually if the following does not work. ( I wouldn't even discount that it died on its own without you or someone else causing it. )

1. Are you using an USB hub? Are you using an USB extension cable? If so dispense with them. Also try your drive with another USB cable.

2. Download Thumbscrew from Thumbscrew: Software USB Write Blocker . Extract the Zip to a folder and run thumbscrew.exe. You will have a thumbscrew icon in the System Tray with which you can toggle "Make USB Read only", "Make USB writeable"

Make your external drive writeable. ( requires a plug-out and plug-in for the change to reflect)

If it works post-haste copy all data elsewhere and give the drive a thrashing by formatting it with HP USB Disk Storage Format Utility.

If it does not work, well, you may have to get into Recovery Mode. Most recovery software will fail to see the drive. Someone, somewhere had said File Scavenger was successful. ( I haven't heard of File Scavenger. Google and find about it)

Let us know how it goes.

( And yep, before I tried Thumbscrew, I created a System Restore point. If I do not intend to keep it I shall do a System Restore. Thumbscrew adds atleast one registry entry on write protect if it is not there already. In my case it was not there and so I would like to bring the registry back to its original state if I do not intend to keep it ticking in my System Tray. That said it appears to be a quite useful utility.)