Crimson_Sands Posted December 9, 2010 Share Posted December 9, 2010 Hi guys. I have a question regarding External/desktop hard drives. I have a 500gb Western Digital passport HDD and have been using it for some time. now all of a sudden when I connect it to my laptop (running vista) it recognizes the device as being connected but I am unable to access it [it dose not show when I enter 'My Computer' or load up on autorun]. dose anyone have any ideas as to how to access the HDD? any help or suggestions would be great. many thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 10, 2010 Share Posted December 10, 2010 Does the drive show up in disk manager? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted December 10, 2010 Share Posted December 10, 2010 (edited) If you restart the computer with the HDD plugged in and then log back in, does it show up in My Computer at all? Another thing you can try, I know this is not necessary and Windows should very well detect it. But its worth a shot, go to the Manufacturer website and see if there are any drivers/software available for that particular HDD. Edited December 10, 2010 by Infiltrator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson_Sands Posted December 10, 2010 Author Share Posted December 10, 2010 Does the drive show up in disk manager? the drive shows as WD 4000BEV External USB Device under Disk Drives in Device Manager Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 10, 2010 Share Posted December 10, 2010 the drive shows as WD 4000BEV External USB Device under Disk Drives in Device Manager Does it have a letter assigned? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted December 10, 2010 Share Posted December 10, 2010 When you unplug it, do you use safe removal? Some drives have caching turned on, and if you arbitrarily unplug them without safe removal, they can damage the drives. Corrupts them really. make sure to set the device for quick removal. While you are at it boot a live linux disc and see if the data is readable. If it doesn't mount automatically, you can try a force mount on the device and then copy the data off to another drive, then when back in windows, format it and then put the data back on it. After the format, make sure to set it for quick removal again. This way you don't have to use safe removal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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