My computer does not recognize my 1TB WD external hard drive anymore?
Question by aka_ultramind: My computer does not recognize my 1TB WD external hard drive anymore?
Here’s my dilemma.
I just bought a 1TB Western Digital “Clickfree” external hard drive. It’s been working fantastic for the whole week until today.
When I first plugged it in windows picked up the device because I heard the sound that Windows 7 makes when up plug a USB device into it.
The drive would not show up in My computer but when I unplugged it for a split second the drive appeared and just as fast disappeared. I am pretty knowledgeable with computers with the work that I do but i have never had this problem before.
I have 2 programs that I use frequently. EASEUS Partition Master and EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. I used both of these programs to investigate this issue. Here are my results.
I found that the partition program was picking up on the drive. It even found all the files in the files in the preview drive application. I could open each individual folder and confirmed each file.
I tried to run a data recovery on the drive with the recovery wizard and after searching for over an hour it came up with next to nothing. It found 3.56GB of files out of 118GB and the ones that it did recover were all corrupt.
I looked in my disk management and it sees my WD hard drive, says that the device is working properly, says all drivers are up to date however there is no drive letter assigned.
So, I tried using the partition software again to assign the drive a letter as well as convert it from a primary drive to a logical drive thinking that there may be a problem there. The partition software successfully changed the drive letter and from primary to logical. When I attempted to plug the drive back in it finally picked it up but when I clicked on the drive in my computer it gives me an error telling me that it cannot find the path to the specified device. Now each time I plug it in it gets assigned a new letter even with no other devices plugged in.
So thinking that my last option to fix the hard drive at the cost of my music and movies archive would be to format and try to fix it this way. Before doing so I took it to my friends place to see if his computer could recognize it and it did. I was able to access the files on his computer like I used to be able to do on my own.
Here is a little more specific information about my computer.
Have an MSI Wind u210
– AMD Athlon Neo MV 1.60 Ghz Processor
– 2GB Ram
– Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Just installed Mobile Partner to connect my USB data stick the other day. Both have worked together perfectly for several days now. But I did notice the problem immediately after using the data stick and unplugging it.
Jet Audio installed today, may have been playing a track saved on the external hard drive and went to sleep or the cord may have come unplugged.
The external hard drive uses USB 3.0 interface and my computer used USB 2.0.
Anyone have any ideas? I can’t think of any more relevant information at the moment. I’d love to be able to fix the problem without having to restore my computer tonight. That is my last option. I’ve read that a lot of people are having the same problem with 1TB WD external hard drives.
Sorry that this is so lightly and thanks for answering.
Kindest Regards,
Best answer:
Answer by gmoneystunt101
you may had lost the driver for the external drive somehow
try reinstall the driver for it or use a driver finder software to assist you with this possible missing driver
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