500 GB WD Portable USB Hard Drive Not Recogni
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xpcman
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Jan 30, 2009 at 05:21 PM
Jan 30, 2009 at 05:21 PM
OK, I will try to keep this as simple as I can. A common problem with external hard drives. Is that they lose their partition information. The very beginning sector of the hard drive has the MBR on it which holds your partition table. It is very likely that this might be corrupt or damage. This happens when you unplug the drive while it's still writing to the MBR.
If your computer recognizes your drive (ie. if the drive is listed under disk management and/or in you device manager) but the drive shows nothing but unallocated space or no drive letter is assigned then this is most likely the problem.
In this case DO NOT create a new partition in windows. This will reformat the drive and make your life very difficult.
I use Acronis Disk Director Suite it works great for more than just this and is a great tool to have on hand. Other ones are Active Partition recovery (untested by me), Partition Table Doctor (also untested) and freeware HDHacker (also untested).
You can Google "MBR repair" for more programs and info.
Western Digital may also provide help and/or software since it's a new drive.
Good Luck
If your computer recognizes your drive (ie. if the drive is listed under disk management and/or in you device manager) but the drive shows nothing but unallocated space or no drive letter is assigned then this is most likely the problem.
In this case DO NOT create a new partition in windows. This will reformat the drive and make your life very difficult.
I use Acronis Disk Director Suite it works great for more than just this and is a great tool to have on hand. Other ones are Active Partition recovery (untested by me), Partition Table Doctor (also untested) and freeware HDHacker (also untested).
You can Google "MBR repair" for more programs and info.
Western Digital may also provide help and/or software since it's a new drive.
Good Luck
xpcman
Posts
19530
Registration date
Wednesday October 8, 2008
Status
Contributor
Last seen
June 15, 2019
1,826
Jan 31, 2009 at 03:32 PM
Jan 31, 2009 at 03:32 PM
There is a good chance that the hard drive is dead. What you see in the system tray is the USB mass storage adapter that interfaces the computer to the hard drive (not the hard drive itself). Hardware more often breaks in the first few weeks than in the next few years. I would contact Western Digital to see if the drive and be removed from the case and installed directly into a computer for data recovery. Good Luck
Jan 31, 2009 at 03:18 PM
Thank you for the suggestion. I did try but it does not locate the WD drive there as well :(
My computer does not recognizes the drive. Also the drive is not listed under disk management or device manager, however it shows in the system tray 'Safely Remove Hardware' ICON. When I double click on this I see WD under USB Mass Storage Device. Clicking on properties it shows that the device is working properly. The location mentioned is Location 0.
I was unable to find anything on Western Digital website as well.
I am worried now as I am a non-techie and all this is very new to me. My priority is now to get the data back.
Is there other way I can get the drive working or at least my data from the drive. The challenge is that when the drive is not at recognized anywhere how do I go ahead with anything?
Please help me.
Thank you.
Nitin
Nov 23, 2010 at 11:16 AM