External HDD won't show up in My Computer

[glutesontheloose]

I lent a friend my External Hard drive and he said he is having problems using it. It gets detected by the computer (shows up in Disk Management & Device Manager) But not on My Computer (Explorer) so he can't access the drive. In Disk Management it seems like it doesn't have a Proper Drive Letter but it won't let me set a drive letter for it as it shows an error that tells me to refresh the list or try to restart the PC. I did both suggestions but it still shows the same error.

 

Do you guys know any fix for this? by the way, the External hard drive is a Western Digital My Passport 1TB and his OS is Windows 7 64-bit.

 

 

Thanks!

[STRMfrmXMN]

*edited posts pretend this never happened *

[STRMfrmXMN]

This won't help you but I've had this issue many times before and no amount of Googling could help.

So I'll sit here waiting for an answer too my friend.

 

I lent a friend my External Hard drive and he said he is having problems using it. It gets detected by the computer (shows up in Disk Management & Device Manager) But not on My Computer (Explorer) so he can't access the drive. In Disk Management it seems like it doesn't have a Proper Drive Letter but it won't let me set a drive letter for it as it shows an error that tells me to refresh the list or try to restart the PC. I did both suggestions but it still shows the same error.

 

Do you guys know any fix for this? by the way, the External hard drive is a Western Digital My Passport 1TB and his OS is Windows 7 64-bit.

 

 

Thanks!

This won't help you but I've had this issue many times before and no amount of Googling could help.

So I'll sit here waiting for an answer too my friend.

[Darkstar101]

Very probably the HDD is dead.

[STRMfrmXMN]

Very probably the HDD is dead.

In al of the times I've done this the device plugged in was fully functional. This exact situation is why I cannot figure out an SSD+HDD config for my desktop - sh*t never shows up in the file explorer.

[Darkstar101]

In al of the times I've done this the device plugged in was fully functional. This exact situation is why I cannot figure out an SSD+HDD config for my desktop - sh*t never shows up in the file explorer.

 

I have a dead WD Elements 500Gb 2.5 USB 3.0 HDD, too much use it had, that's why it died. And it shows up Disk Management & Device Manager but not on My Computer.

 

And I got one WD Elements 1Tb 2.5 USB 3.0 HDD, D.O.A. aka Dead On Arrival, that was replaced for another one. And it also showed up in Disk Management & Device Manager but not on My Computer.

 

See if it's under warranty and ask for a replacement.

[glutesontheloose]

Well I do not have the drive on my hands right now and I just used it right before I gave it to my friend. Could it be its a problem with the Computer he used it on?

[Jetster]

Does it have an active partition? And STR don't hijack a thread. Let the OP work the problem. So GTR it worked at some point?  

 

If a drive is in the disk manager but not showing in windows it is not reading the active partition. Go into the disk manager and delete the partition. You will lose all the data doing this. Then create a new active partition.

 

If you want to recover the data that's another issue

[Techpumpkin_WD]

Hello, 

Sometimes external HDDs could misbehave like that if they aren't getting enough power. Make sure that your friend is using a known good USB cable. You could also try plugging it to a different USB port, and try it on a different system. What is the status of the HDD in Disc Management? What is the exact error that you are getting there? 

Hope that helps and don't forget to come back with more info. 

[Keystone Nyan Cat]

I've had a similar problem with my WD HDD, and it turned out it was defective. Does the HDD detect for a split second when pulling out the cable? Try another known working cable [preferably shorter if available] and see if it persists, which if it does, you have eliminated the cable.

 

Try contacting WD's support and tell them about this, along with the ways in which you went about troubleshooting it. They are pretty amazing and will generally deal with it quite quickly

 

I hope this helps!

[glutesontheloose]

My apologies for leaving this thread inactive for a while. (went to a place with no internet access).

 

 

Anyways, problem is fixed. Simple solution is to disable Anti-Virus. I believe my friend was using Avira Anti-Virus and it was blocking the autorun feature of the Hard drive that is why it won't show up in Windows Explorer. Don't know why it did that since I've lent him the same drive months ago and used it on the same PC.

 

Thanks for trying to help though, really appreciate it!