Western Digital External Hard Drive not Recognized by Windows XP: Does not show up in My Computer or Device Manager.

Anonymous
2010-05-13T01:16:46+00:00

My external hard drive does not run automatically when plugged into my USB port on my computer.  It is not recognized in my computer and it does not show up in Device Manager.  I have applied a hot fix for this problem and it was stated that problems are detected but after applying the hot fix the problem still exits!  HELP.  I went to Western Digital for this problem and they stated in their FAQ's that it is a Windows problem and that the drivers might be corrupted.  This is probably true as the device works perfectly on other computers.  Now what do I do?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2010-08-11T06:46:44+00:00

Here’s the actual steps needed to get your external USB drive assigned a letter in Windows XP if it does not show up in Windows Explorer:

1)     Right-click on “My Computer”

2)     Click “Manage”

3)     Double-click “Disk Management”

4)     You will probably see Disk 0 and Disk 1 for your primary hard drive. Go to lower right portion of box and scroll down until you see Disk 2. It is probably your USB drive without a letter.  It should show the size of the drive.

5)     Right-click in the left portion of that drive box (Disk 2)

6)     Click “Initialize” and “OK” in the next dialog box. This takes just a few seconds and it should now say “Online” in the “Disk 2” box.

7)     Right-click in the box to the right side of the “Disk 2” box (where it shows your disk drive size and says “Unallocated”.

8)     Click “New Partition” and a “New Partition Wizard” will open up.

9)     Click “Next”, then select “Primary Partition” and click “Next”.

10) Verify partition size (use entire disk size available unless you are creating multiple drives) and Click “Next”.

11) Assign drive letter (“F” is typical if CD-Rom is E) and click “Next”.

12) Format this partition with “NTFS”, “Default”, “New Volume” and click “Next”.

13) Then click “Finish” to exit the wizard and start formatting.

14) Be patient… this can take awhile (it took just over an hour for a 320GB drive).

15) When done, you should see an icon for your drive in Windows Explorer!

Hope this helps!!

Doc

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-01-18T01:45:00+00:00

    I am hoping that I can still see the conversations and solutions for this problem.  I still have not solved it due to the fact that I have not had time to try most of the solutions due to family issues.  However, when the time comes to solve this problem I would like to see as many suggestions to this issue as possible.  I am in a quandry because many of my pictures are on my external hard drive and I would like to back them up and can't because I cant see the darn drive!!  It was working properly at one time and then just quit being visible on my computer.. 

    Thanks...bonofan1823

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-01-19T18:50:21+00:00

    Hi bonofan

    I read you were able to see the icon for few seconds and then it was gone, do you see if windows pops up any message in the lower right corner when you plug it in??

    I posted something similar in another post. I had the same problem with a WD 250GB external hard drive. the reason that happened was because I pulled it out without using the 'removing safely hardware' from my computer, so something got corrupted in the way the system reads the HD.

    anyways, what i did was to run chkdsk on it and that fixed my problem. I did it rebooting the machine and this one detected it right away.. you can try the same thing or try some other tools like Hiren's CD that has NTFS4DOS included or you can try to use the ntfs4dos from a floppy drive.. this has to be done when booting since windows GUI can not see the drive properly.

    good luck,

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-01-20T04:50:48+00:00

    Per LemP's request, I am starting another thread to see if I can get any answers to the same problem. 

    Title: Western Digital USB External Hard Drive not found by Win XP.

    Lurker38

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-04-30T17:48:26+00:00

    Hi thanks for this detailed explanation.  One question:  will this process clear the existing data from the external hard drive?  I don't want to clear the data.

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