Solved WD Essential 2.0 HD recognized but no letter assigned

[Japes21]

I just connected for the first time a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 2.0 external hard drive and it appears in my devices as My Book. I cannot access it however. There is no letter assigned to this drive and when I try to assign one using disk management, the option to assign a letter is grayed out and therefore not usable. The drive is showing in the disk management screen and all appears to be well except that there is no letter assigned and I am not able to give it one. Any ideas?

Thank you,
Joe

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Post a screen shot of Disk Management if possible.

Does Disk Management show that drive as having a file system?

 

[Japes21]

Here is my screenshot:

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Is this a new external drive?

Have you installed any software on it or altered it in any way?

I have little experience with external drives, but it's surprising to me that it would show in Disk Management as having an "EFI system partition".

Are those things supposed to be formatted from the factory?

 

[Japes21]

Hi ignatzatsonic,

Thank you for your help! I removed the new drive from a sealed box and plugged it into my laptop. I was expecting some kind of setup process to occur but all that happened is a notification popup from the taskbar stating that my device was installed and ready for use. I have tried disconnecting the drive from the computer, removing power to the drive and changing USB ports and there was no change. I googled the problem and all I could find of any use was a reference to the first partition being labelled "EFI system partition" means it is Mac formatted. Not sure if that is true and I was unable to find futher info in that regard. The drive came in a box labelled Windows.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Hmmmm................

I assume it came with no instructions that help?

I'm wondering if you got a Mac package mistakenly placed in a Windows box?

Have you gone online to Western Digital or contacted their support?

My immediate inclination would be to wipe all partitions from it and make a new single NTFS partition, format it, and assign a drive letter. That's what I would do on an internal drive.

BUT I am out of my element on external drives. I suggest you wait for more input from someone more familiar with them.

 

[Japes21]

My immediate inclination would be to wipe all partitions from it and make a new single NTFS partition, format it, and assign a drive letter.

How would I go about doing this? I assume it can be done in Disk management?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

My immediate inclination would be to wipe all partitions from it and make a new single NTFS partition, format it, and assign a drive letter.

How would I go about doing this? I assume it can be done in Disk management?

Yes. You would just right click a given partition and delete it.

The result is "unallocated space", which can then be made into partitions as desired.

But, as per my prior post, I won't ask you to do it as I am uninformed about externals.

 

[Japes21]

My immediate inclination would be to wipe all partitions from it and make a new single NTFS partition, format it, and assign a drive letter.

How would I go about doing this? I assume it can be done in Disk management?

Yes. You would just right click a given partition and delete it.

The result is "unallocated space", which can then be made into partitions as desired.

But, as per my prior post, I won't ask you to do it as I am uninformed about externals.

I cannot change the first partition (the EFI system partition) in any way. All options are grayed out except 'help'. If this is truly formatted for a Mac, perhaps I would have to use a Mac to wipe it, then repartition it on my PC?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

That may be--or maybe some type of Linux tool?

If you right click the other partitions, can you see a menu choice from which you could delete a partition/volume?

 

[Japes21]

That may be--or maybe some type of Linux tool?

If you right click the other partitions, can you see a menu choice from which you could delete a partition/volume?

Yes. The primary partition allows me to 'delete volume' and the unallocated partition allows me to create a 'new simple volume'. My guess (I am WAY out of my league here) is that the EFI system partition would still block me from accessing the drive even if I wiped/reformatted the remainder of the drive. Just a wild guess.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Download and install the free version of Partition Wizard. That should allow to to do whatever you want to the drive.

 

[Japes21]

Download and install the free version of Partition Wizard. That should allow to to do whatever you want to the drive.

Thank you, Deaconfrost. I will try that and report my results....

 

[Japes21]

Success! I used Partition Wizard to reformat the hard drive as NTFS and it is now recognized as my F drive. I've already transferred files over and it works great. Big thank yous to both ignatzatsonic and DeaconFrost for steering me in the right direction!!!

 

[DeaconFrost]

Awesome...good news. That's a powerful little app, especially considering it's free.

 

[DanB]

I may be way off, but thought I would reply. I had a similar problem with my external USB hard drive. It would not assign a letter and sometimes did not see it at all. This only happened on my laptop. I followed many posts to delete my usb drivers, etc. Finally found out that the laptop did not have enough power to spin the drive through the USB port. Bought a powered USB hub and fixed it no problem. There's my 2 cents.