Solved WD My Passport External HDD not showing in my computer

[blueyedsamurai]

A friend gave me his external to transfer some files onto it but I cant seem to get it to show in my computer.

It shows in device manager and disk management and it also shows up in devices and printers.

I've tried assigning its own drive letter but those options are greyed out.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Easy

Right mouse click (on the partition - not the system partition) and assign it a letter - then it will show up. In your example right click on the 465.42 GB partition with the blue strip at the top.

Cheers

jimbo

 

[blueyedsamurai]

Those options are greyed out, I tried to do that before but had no luck.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Are you sure you moved your mouse well into the rectangle for the 465.42GB partition. Normally this works 100% of the time unless the disk is OFF line. which in this case it isn't.

Try unplugging the HDD , re-plugging it in and having another go.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[jumanji]

Hi blueeyedSamurai,

It looks like that external drive was formatted by your friend on a Mac. At the moment it is a guess. Ask your friend.

If you want to format it now in Windows 7, I can tell you something to try but again ask your friend if you can do that and then copy all the files he wanted.

So, Ask your friend, ask your friend and then come back.

 

[Anshad Edavana]

The disk seems to be in GPT style. Is this disk is formatted on a Mac system ? ( Windows doesn't seems to recognize the file system ). Your friend uses a Mac ?.


OOps, parallel posting.

 

[jumanji]

Never mind Anshad. Same wine, different bottles.

 

[blueyedsamurai]

yeh he does have a mac, I guess that might be the issue. Could I use HFSE explorer?

 

[Anshad Edavana]

A friend gave me his external to transfer some files onto it but I cant seem to get it to show in my computer.

If i am not mistaken, you need to copy some file in to the HDD. If that is the case, "HFS Explorer" won't help - it only help you to read HFS volumes and copy files from it. For that purpose, there is also another tool available - "Disk Internal's Linux Reader".

Access to Ext 2/3/4, HFS and ReiserFS from Windows


If you need to write to the disk, you need a commercial app - "HFS for Windows" by "Paragon".

HFS for Windows - file system driver | PARAGON Software Group

 

[Anshad Edavana]

There is also another tool available - "MacDrive".

MacDrive

It offers 5 day full functional trial so if you only need a temporary write access to copy some files, the trail version will do the trick.

 

[jumanji]

That is a good suggestion by Anshad Edavana.

 

[jumanji]

Some additional information:

Mac OS X 10.3 and onwards can read NTFS and so you may copy the data into an NTFS drive and give it to your friend.

 

[blueyedsamurai]

I got macdrive and that worked perfect, recognized it straight away.

Thanks for the help, I was a bit confused because I just assumed the external was a windows file system