Western digital 1TB external hard drive not recognized by PC Solved/Closed

Question

Hello, 

I have a WD 1TB external hard drive, supposed new without documentation. The light comes on and there are soft noises from within, but when I connect to my laptop, the drive is not recognized. 

There is no USB device acknowledgement of new device found. The drive does not show in the device manager or through My Computer. 

I am running XP with SP3 on an older Dell Latitude D620. I saw an earlier response that involves modifying the registry, but I am very hesitant to do that because of past registry problems on a different PC.  

I tried downloading a driver from WD, but it will not install.  I tried that several more times with the same result.  I changed the USB cable with no result.  

It could be that I got suckered on buying a defective drive, but a quick check on Google shows this is a very common problem with WD external drives and there are hundreds of suggested fixes.

I am an average user with average technical skills, and this one has me stumped.  Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Diggi · Accepted Answer

Hi, 

 Click on Start --> Run ---> type diskmgmt.msc and click on OK 
 Right-click on WD Passport Drive --> Select Change Drive Letter and Paths... 
 Click on Add button ---> Select your drive letter and click on OK 
 Note: If the drive letter is already assigned, then try changing the drive letter by clicking on the Change button instead of Add button in the above step
 If the problem still persists: 
 Click on Start --> Run --> type regedt32 and click on OK 
 Registry Editor will be opened 
 First backup your registry by going to File --> Export 
 Then expand the following key: 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967- E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} 

 If you see any upper-filter or lowerf-ilters entries at the right side, simply delete them.
 Close the registry and restart your PC.

Hope, it will work!

RPhlb · Answer

I was able to get around this issue by taking the WD Drive Manager service and making it a Manual operation, instead of Automatic. You can always try this out. I have 2 different WD drives a Passport and a My Book, the My Book was unrecognized when I added the Passport. Took me quite a while to find the issue on my PC, turning off the WD Drive Manager service and let Windows handle it. Best of luck on this.

R2D2_WD · Answer

Hi, jazzed17

Could you please provide me with the model number of your WD external, so that I can be more specific while trying to help? You can check in BIOS to see if the drive is recognized there. You mentioned that the installation of the WD drivers failed. Could you give me some more details about that? About those sounds, coming from the drive, could you describe them as sounds from the spinning or is it more like scratching? 
I would not suggest you to modify anything on your system before confirming that your drive is working fine. Have you tried the drive on another PC? 

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19871-01/820-5830-13/app_bios.html - here you can find more details about BIOS. 

Hope this helps

Western digital 1TB external hard drive not recognized by PC

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